Rutledge McMillin

I feel like this film, in part, like its protagonist is in search of what it really means to be a sensitive human being in 21st century America. Fern doesn't want to put down roots in some fantastical escape of a farm with her new would-be lover or accept the charity of her sister and her husband who, like many, has managed to profit from the very forces that spit so many people out onto the road. She wants to experience the life that America really has to offer most of its citizens, not the splendor at the margins that mesmerizes those with the power to actually change it. Like Swankie and her birds, she wants to immerse herself in the world as it is and fully experience it, even if that means a series of thankless jobs and a constant struggle to find space to be free. It's a film that manages to be a searing criticism of our country by just walking around in it. I would put it up there with Down and Out in Paris and London or The Road to Wigan Pier. When mere observation works as criticism, you know there's work to do.