RIDE ON, BRADY
Beautifully shot and perfectly paced rodeo story delicate balance of fact, fiction
You’ve got to love the Wikipedia plot synopsis for The Rider, the newest film from China’s Chloé Zhao: “A cowboy is injured when he falls off his horse.” True. And Apollo 13 is about three guys having a rough commute home from work.
Beautifully shot and perfectly paced, The Rider also balances precisely atop the fiction/documentary divide. The screenplay is by Zhao but the characters, including rodeo rider Brady Blackburn (portrayed by Brady Jandreau), his gruff father and his autistic sister, are drawn from real life. In fact, Zhao met Brady while researching her first film, 2015’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me, and decided to craft her next one around him.
Both the real-life Brady and the fictional one have suffered grievous head injuries from a rodeo accident.
Brady is the quintessential, machismo cowboy — and yet he’s not. On the one hand, he’s determined to get back in the saddle, no matter what his doctors tell him. Working at a grocery store “while I’m laid up,” he at one point spins his pricing gun like a six-shooter. Out on the range, he pops off rounds from the real thing. But in almost every interaction, he remains quiet and
watchful. When two kids recognize him in the store, he asks the younger one about his plans to be a rodeo rider, then patiently stands with them for a photo. He’s gentle with his sister, asking her if she’ll sing him to sleep. And he has a real touch with wild horses, taming one skittish beast with little more than his soothing voice.
The Rider is one of those nota-lot-happens movies. Brady is constantly pulled back into the rodeo’s orbit, but he’s clearly too physically fragile and emotionally wary to get back on the bull. (At least, watching the movie, you hope he won’t do it.) But underneath his perambulations lie an unspoken question: What do you when you can’t do the one thing that defines you? Who are you anymore?
The movie ends on a grace note that doesn’t quite answer the question, but gives us plenty to think about as we mosey home afterward. Alongside the recent drama Lean on Pete, The Rider reminds us that even in this century, horses and their riders keep on keeping on.