The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC), a group of 60 of which I’ve been a proud member since the 1990s, has named Chloe Zhao’s melancholy cowboy drama, The Rider, as the best picture of 2018.
Grade: A (***** out of *****)
On my Ten Best Films, The Rider occupies the fifth place, after Roma, Burning, Zama, and Shoplifters (all of which non-English tales, made by foreign directors!)
It is only the second feature of the Chinese-American director, who’s a graduate of NYU Cinema School. Earlier.
The Rider, took the top prize, the Art Cinema Award, of the Directors’ Fortnight in the 2017 Cannes Film Fest. However, it was thatrically released a year later, in 2018, by Sony Classics).
(Zhao’s debut, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, had played in the same sidebar in the 2015 Cannes Film Fest).
Narrative
Young cowboy Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau), once a rising star of the rodeo circuit and a gifted horse trainer, is warned that his riding days are over after a horse badly crushed his skull at a rodeo, putting him in a coma.
Back home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, Brady struggles with the physical and emotional complications of the accident.
He is comforted by his younger sister, Lilly (Lilly Jandreau), who has Asperger’s Syndrome.
But serious tensions prevail between him and his gambling father, Wayne (Tim Jandreau), when Wayne resorts to selling Brady’s favorite horse in order to keep their trailer home.
With few alternatives for a different way of life, Brady feels a growing sense of inadequacy unable to ride and rodeo–the essentials of being a cowboy, and the defining elements in his life.
Frustrated, Brady starts to drift away from his rodeo friends and spend more time with his friend Lane (Lane Scott), who is in rehab after his once promising bull-riding career ended in a tragic accident.
Unable to stay away from his horses, he decides to start riding and training them again. However, the complications of his head injury soon puts him in dangerous situations, and eventually he’s back in the hospital.
After another painful loss in his life, in an attempt to regain control of his own fate, Brady recklessly returns to the rodeo.
Facing a major dilemma, Brady has to decide between healing with the help of his family and friends, or risking it all to keep his only true sense of self.
The authenticy of this elegiac neo-western relies heavily on the casting of untrained actors, real residents who play fictional versions of themseoves.
Seamlessly blending elements of fiction and non-fiction, The Rider is a poignant character study of one man, who’s strugglinbg to achieve and maintain a sense of self-worth–searchng for his place in the world–in unbearaby harsh and cruel settings.
With complete control over her various crafts, Zhao has made an understated film, marked by precise mise-en-scene and meticulous attention to detail.
Visually, The Rider unfolds as poetry in motion, posing its main figure (often shown in close-ups and mega close-ups) against the vast expanses of nature.
Neither pitying nor patronizing Brady, she refrains impressively from a sentimental tone, resulting in a fearkess, intimate portrait of a cowboy who may be struggling with the shifting meaning of manhood. In many ways, The Rider represents a bold, uncomporimising effort at deconstructng the essence of masculinity in a shifting, merciless milieu.
Sony Picture Classics released The Rider on April 13, 2018. Boosted by unanimously great reviews, the indie Western earned $2,419,031 in the U.S. alone, ad globally over $4 million (against a miniscule budget of about $80,000).
Inspired by:
While making her first film, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 2013, Chloé Zhao got to know a group of Lakota cowboys. Despite their fair complexion, they were born and raised on the reservation and are Oglala Lakota Sioux and bonafide cowboys. They wear feathers in their hats to honor their Lakota ancestry, Indian cowboy, which may sound as an American contradiction.
Fascinated with these men, Chloe cast some of them as supporting actors in her film.
In 2015, while visiting a ranch on Pine Ridge Reservation, Chloé met the Lakota cowboy Brady Jandreau. Brady, then 21, a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, currently resides on Pine Ridge.
A saddle bronc rider and horse trainer, Brady hunts on horseback, and fishes in the white river–he’s at one with Nature. He spends most of his time working with wild horses, breaking and training them until they’re fit for selling.
He’s been doing this all hislife–since he was eight years old. Brady understands every gesture and movement of the horse. His inyeration with the horsemis like telepathic dance routine, one giving way to the other, until slowly, a trust is formed.
Inspired by the character’s autenticity and isolated existnce, Zhao started to gather ideas for a film about Brady. On April 1, 2016, Brady entered the PRCE rodeo in Fargo, North Dakota. He was to compete in the ‘Saddle Bronc’ section and felt confident after a string of successful rides during the season. But that night Brady was thrown off. The bucking horse stomped on his head and almost fatally crashed his skull. Brady’s brain bled internally. He had a seizure and fell into a three-day coma.
Bearing a a metal plate in his head, Brady suffers from other health issues associated with the severe traumatic brain injury. The doctors advised him to never ride again, warnng that if he hits his head again, it could be fatal. But, inherently stubborn and always true to himself, the defiant Brady was back breaking wild horses.
Chloé visited him and they talked about why he is risking his life. “Last month, we had to shoot Apollo (a horse Brady was training) because his leg got cut badly by barbed wire.” Brady told Chloé. “If an animal around here gets hurt like I did, they’ll get put down. I was only kept alive because I’m human and that’s not enough. I’m useless if I can’t do what I was born to do.”
Brady’s response made Chloé think about the psychological impact these injuries have on young men like him, what it must be like to live in the heartland of America, unable to match up to the ideal image of a cowboy, an image these young men have tried to live up to their whole lives.
Chloé decided to make a film about Brady’s struggles, both physically and emotionally, as he comes to terms with his injury.
Casting
As Chloé listened to Brady reflecting on the first months of his life after the injury, she cast Brady, his family and friends to play the fictionalized versions of themselves. Everyone in the film came from in and around the reservation. This includes Brady’s father, Tim, an old school cowboy who taught Brady all he knows. His bright and spirited sister, Lilly, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, and expressed herself completely free of inhibitions. His rodeo friends, all sharing in Brady’s hopes, fears and dreams, and one of his best-friends Lane, who is completely paralyzed after an accident that ended his promising bull riding career.
“Working with Brady and Lane in a scene was one of the most humbling and inspiring moments of my life.” Chloé reflects, “We started production on September 3, 2016. The five-week filming mainly took place on the reservation and in the surrounding Badlands. Brady, who works as a professional horse trainer, trained horses for the first half of each day in order to have them ready for a horse sale. So we were able to capture a lot of authentic footage of Brady training and interacting with horses, while fully taking advantage of the magical South Dakota sunset. We worked with a small crew, filming in people’s homes, real locations and events. This is my second collaboration with cinematographer Joshua James Richards. We strived to capture moments in an organic yet cinematic way in order to further integrate a complete sense of reality into the narrative. Through Brady’s journey, both on and off screen, I hope to explore our culture of masculinity and to offer a more nuanced version of the classic American cowboy. I also want to offer an authentic portrait of the rough, honest and beautiful American heartland that I deeply love and respect.”
National Society of Film Critics Awards
Alfonso Cuaron’s highly acclaimed Roma was the runner-up; Cuaron also won Best Director and Best Cinematography.
