Tropic Sprockets / The Rider

Tropic Sprockets / The Rider

Chloe Zhao (Songs My Brother Taught Me) directs the very affecting docudrama “The Rider,” about a Lakota Indian rodeo rider and the struggles he faces every day. The film is based on true events and it stars the people who were part of the these events. Often this approach does not work. Surprisingly and happily however, it works very well here.

Brady (Brady Jandreau) is a talented horseman who is recuperating from a severe head injury involving a beloved horse. He lives with his father (the real life Dad Tim Jandreau) and autistic sister Lilly (also real) .

Day in and day out Brady is badgered to compete in rodeos. He is truly tempted but knows his injury was intense (after all he has a metal plate in his head) and politely refuses.

Brady lives with small seizures that grip his hand. He takes a job in a grocery store and battles with his health against his life’s purpose to ride and train.

To complicate matters, his best friend Lane (who plays himself) is paralyzed and watches himself on YouTube as a seemingly indestructible bull rider. Brady wants to be supportive without being cloying. The two clearly share a bond.

The film wonderfully illustrates the close knit Lakota community of cowboy riders where the “cowboy way” is in the food they eat, the colors they see and the air they breathe. Riding is not a job, but a way of life.

This story is a Western film of a sort, but instead of villains with black hats, the adversary is Brady’s own heart and whether or not it is right for him to get back on his horse once more.
This is a visceral film and it is unerringly authentic. All scars are revealed, both literally and figuratively. Where other cameras might pull away, Zhao holds still and shows us everything. Brace yourself. Dad is no barrel of laughs.

While casting the actual people in their roles is often problematic, one gets genuine pathos and it never feels mawkish, sentimental or silly. At one point things take a dark turn as Brady pulls out a gun but this is no Western Gothic, rather this is more a cold fact: pistols and cowboys remain a concrete aspect of the ordinary day.

“The Rider” highlights a place where horse and man are truly one. We see Brady and his mount moving with the sky in Lakota locomotion, a single engine, beautiful and blessed.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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