Frankly, I didn't care for it. Frances McDormand was very compelling to watch, and I understand the feel the movie was going for, but I guess the lifestyle rubbed me the wrong way. It was portrayed as a freeing life, but a very hard life. I could never do it, nor would I want to, but McDormand's character of Fern made a conscience choice to live that way, almost like she had to, but I didn't get why she had to. The one lady's story about the desert being her boat made sense to me, so was the movie trying to sell me on the nomad life? Or was it trying to make me care about the people that live the nomad life? It felt a little preachy at one point and I definitely didn't like that.
It feels like most of these nomad people suffered a loss, then decided to live the nomad life, which seems to be a very solitaire lifestyle. Although, there were many scenes in the movie where it is shown that these nomads were kind of a tight-knit community. You don't say goodbye; you say see you down the road. At multiple times of the movie everyone knew Fern's name, heck even random cigarette kid remembered her.
My buddy who hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine told me that the big saying on the trail was "hike your own hike". That means go at your own pace because your job for the next 6+ months is to walk. That's it. You have beautiful nature, fresh air, time with your thoughts, and maybe you run into someone, you chat them up, you hike a little bit together, and then you never see them again. Along the way my friend met a group of people and kind of hung with them for a good chunk of the trail. So the trail life, the nomad life, it's not really my thing and neither was whatever this movie was trying to be.
Sadly, I couldn't get the idea out of my head that Frances McDormand's character lost all her money on the three billboards so that's why she was now living the nomad life.
