The Rider: Chloé Zhao's film Reinvigorates the Western with Curiosity and Heart

“I hope they don’t forget about this film come Oscar season.” They’re going to forget about this film come Oscar season.” These were my thoughts only moments after watching Director Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider.” I thought these things because I genuinely felt the impact of this film that strongly, and I genuinely felt that way. I felt that way, because Zhao’s film is the kind that always gets ignored come Oscar season. It is too under seen a film, with too early a release date. It possesses the kind of beauty and craft that that hangs on to you but never stifles ( in my opinion the academy likes being stifled). Zhao’s film is patient in every possible way. It wants its story of a Rider permanently impaired by brain damage stemming from an accident dialogue, its picturesque landscapes, its characters to soak, to permeate the deeper portions of your memory…and it does.

One of the more interesting aspects of Chloé Zhao’s film is the way it mines common preconceptions of the almost folkloric type of masculinity associated with the Midwest (more specifically Cowboys) for something more flexible, something more inviting to the audience. All the typical sign posts are still there, the emotional restraint, the use of aggression as a tool, the isolation, the unsaid regulation of behaviors not in keeping with “being a man”. They are all there, but they are each of them softer, subtler, and more endearing. It can be noted in the interactions between Brady and his compadres, the attention - and care given to Lane Scott ( - another rodeo great impaired by a tragic injury), or to his beloved real life sister Lily. I would venture to say that quite possibly the most beautiful, interesting and engaging proof of this lies in relationship between Brady and his horses. Unlike in other films where this is used a s a prop to show the cowboy’s skill or to impose upon us his level of attractiveness (especially as it may pertain to an object of his affections) this is just about their relationship. I don’t need to hear how Brady does it. For me, it holds no pertinence beyond informing the rest of us how much he knows. Zhao is interested in the love, the feeling , the patience Brady possesses. The attraction she desires is more more natural and less forced through dialogue meant to “ooh” and “aw” the rest of us. Zhao is almost as interested in the horses as she is Brady, because she wants us to see how the horses react. That is how she informs the audience he knows what he is doing. It’s how she conveys to us the relationship, and the love within. Various close-ups on the eyes, - cuts to various body parts, and intimate shots affirm this. There is a scene where Brady has to put down a horse who escapes its paddock and seriously maims itself. There is a deep sadness to the scene that goes beyond Brady’s pain, because Zhao is not content to merely center Brady’s emotion. Whether its anthropomorphic or not we are given cues to empathize in a distinctive manner with this animal. To be made to feel as though this animal senses its end. That the horse is afraid and unsure of what to do. We find it just standing there, but it’s not laying down, it hasn’t given up, but it also is not running, because he’s too badly hurt. The horse wants to go on doing what it is meant to do, what it wants to do, but can’t. In providing this parallel between horse and rider , it humanizes the horse allowing for a deeper empathy than normal. It is romance in the most classical sense, and it’s one of the better displays of the relationship between horse and rider, man and beast, I’ve seen on film.

Zhao’s work is deliberately paced, has an arc, but its subtle. You’re not always aware of just where you’re going because much like the characters in the work of Director Asghar Farhadi, they seem to be figuring it out as we are. I would gather by conjecture that Zhao is the type of director that doesn’t necessarily map out the entire stories, and that she sort of allows them to tell their own story from inside her head. I don’t know that this is actually the case, but the magic of Zhao’s film is that it gives the appearance of such. Like Fahardi films, it has the feel of a documentary without taking a documentary’s actual form. It never once feels like a sprint upon a well paved track, but rather a walk along an unpaved road. At first it’s cold, you’re unsure and you wonder where it is you’re going. Sometimes you interrupt the conversation wondering how long you’ve walked thus far, but once you’ve arrived there is this intense emotionality tied to you, lingering about your person. You’ve been on this quiet, staggered, picturesque walk and you’ve learned something about everyone involved. You’ve learned about Zhao, Jandreau, and cinematographerJoshua James Richards. You’ve rediscovered through their eyes an aspect of Americana that has almost been reduced to myth and legend, here redeemed and reinvigorated by newfound curiosity , and an outside perspective .