A different kind of cowboy

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This article was published 01/08/2018 (2994 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Reticent and rough-edged, this art-house neo-Western features Brady Jandreau, a real-life cowboy from the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge First Nation in South Dakota, playing a version of himself.

A young rodeo star who has sustained a severe head injury in a bronc-riding accident, Brady must redefine his sense of identity after being told he can’t risk another bad fall.

Beijing-born filmmaker Chloé Zhao (Songs My Brother Taught Me), who financed this low-budget drama on her credit cards, favours a documentary-style approach, relying on the slow, patient observation of her non-professional cast.

This is a purposefully reticent film, its plain and functional dialogue not even reaching the usual laconic level of cinematic cowboy talk.

The poetry comes from a heightened apprehension of the wide-open South Dakota landscape — captured by cinematographer Joshua James Richards — and a deep understanding of the relationships between humans and animals.

Brady lives in a trailer with his father (played by the actor’s actual father, Tim Jandreau), who alternates between tough love and drunken meanness, and his 15-year-old sister (played by his real-life sister, Lilly Jandreau). Lilly, who is autistic, is the one chatty character in the film, sometimes singing lovely little songs she composes in the moment.

The film opens on a scene of Brady taking medical staples out of his head with a pocketknife. He lives in a community where the phrase “cowboy up” means swallowing the pain and getting on with things. But as he later tells a friend, “A brain is a little different from cracked ribs.”

Brady tries working at a grocery mart — just until he “heals up,” he tells people — but you can still see the imprint of his cowboy hat along the back of his hair.

Struggling with the side-effects of his fall and not sure whether he’ll ever be able to return to his old life, he’s left to figure out what it means to be a man if he can’t be a rodeo rider.

This is not the usual cowboy quest, which is exactly The Rider’s point.

Scenes of Brady working with horses are extraordinary, offering the pure cinematic pleasure of watching someone do something they are very good at. (And these are sequences that couldn’t possibly be replicated by a Hollywood star, no matter how good he might look in his Wranglers.) Brady possesses deep-down knowledge and skill, but also something else that goes beyond that — “the touch,” as one character calls it.

Zhao’s touch is sometimes less certain. She hasn’t quite developed the delicacy or precision of Kelly Reichardt, another indie director interested in deconstructing the myths of the American West.

But she has crafted something that feels unusual and urgent.

Scenes in which Brady visits his profoundly injured friend, Lane (played by Lane Scott, a bull rider who is now unable to walk or talk), have a heartrending realness to them. Working together, Scott, Jandreau and Zhao break down the iconic image of the cowboy and build it back up again.

These characters are reaching toward a different vision of manhood, realizing there are different ways to be strong, different ways to be brave.

For a story in which emotions are tamped down and shunted, The Rider finds a moving and difficult power.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca