Talk Rodeo
The RIDER i How a near-fatal head injury inspired an arthouse western…
Starring real-life horse trainer Brady Jandreau as a rodeo rider coming to terms with life after brain surgery (which has left him with a four-inch scar), Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is a beautiful tribute to the old ways of the American West. And this is despite the fact the 36-year-old, Beijing-born director was not so familiar with the western as a genre.
“I’d seen two or three westerns before I shot The Rider,” laughs Zhao, whose film is being hailed for its acuity in depicting the life of Native American cowboys in the fly-over state of North Dakota. “Before I started watching movies, I grew up with manga. I guess that was my introduction to stories told through pictures.”
Which perhaps explains why The Rider is so visually simple and yet so emotionally complex, as Jandreau interacts with his own real-life family in a story that is broadly 40 per cent biographical and 60 per cent drama. Was it a risk hiring so many non-professionals? Zhao thinks not. “I don’t really see a difference between professional actors and non-actors,” she says. “I see authentic performances and non-authentic performances. In the case of Brady, I think he was born with a natural talent to be completely present. Which is good training for the camera.”
But for Zhao, Jandreau also expresses something else: living history. “We live in a very conforming world,” she explains. “It’s getting smaller, and we’re conforming to the same trends, and we can’t avoid it, because of how interconnected we are.
“And so it’s always really fascinating to me every time I meet someone who’s so authentically themselves. It’s almost that they’ve stopped time. There’s something about Brady that carries a tradition that’s fading away. It’s encouraging to see a young person who is a representation of that.”
ETA | 14 SEPTEMBER / THE RIDER OPENS IN TWO MONTHS.