After Chloé Zhao’s recent win for Best Director at the Golden Globes, I made a point to learn more about her and her previous work. There, I learned of her movie The Rider, which came out in 2017. Apparently, after seeing this movie at TIFF, Frances McDormand approached her about directing Nomadland. So, I was delighted to find it on Amazon Prime, and watched it right away.
The movie follows a young rodeo rider – Brady Jandreau (Blackburn in the movie) – who sustains a head injury in a rodeo accident. Having been immersed in rodeo his whole life, he struggles with resolving his identity and finding new purpose, while also saddled with the pressures of his community to continue on – even when he knows he probably can’t.
I’ve learned that Chloé Zhao tends to use real people, not actors, in her work. (This is the same in Nomadland where Linda May, Swankie, and Bob Wells portray themselves.) Apparently, Zhao had met Brady when she was in South Dakota filming a prior movie, and seen him train a horse. She thought that if he could connect with a horse that way, perhaps he could connect with an audience, too. And, she was right.
You are immediately enveloped into Brady’s story through his gentle manner, determined spirit, and (enviable) ability with horses. In fact, in the movie, they show him actually training a horse, and you can see what Chloé saw in him that day at the ranch.
The film is fairly slow-paced and subtle, but it is beautifully filmed, with impressive landscape shots and gorgeous light that the Director of Photography, Joshua James Richards, attributes largely to being filmed in the Badlands.
I really enjoyed this movie. It’s not flashy or fast-paced, but it quickly drew me in, and I found myself reflecting on it for days after. It’s definitely one of the best movies I’d never heard of before, and I’d hate for you to miss out. Give it a go!
What movies have you enjoyed lately?
