Show & Tell: The Rider
All:
Yes, that quiet knocking on the door is actually August, ready to be flipped into position on your calendar. For sun worshippers and devotees of summer activities, it’s a sign to floor the accelerator of the summer ride, ‘cause even with the global climate in flux, autumn in New England doesn’t always wait its turn in September.
But what the hell! The Music Hall is always in high gear with quality movies, and The Rider, which is now showing in The Historic Theater, looks to be one of the best.
The Rider is the story of a young rodeo rider trying to recover from a devastating injury. His doctors tell him that he can’t ride anymore, that his next ride might be his last.
But what does a young man who has built his entire life around the rodeo do with himself on the Pine Ridge reservation of South Dakota?
There are a number of very specifically astonishing things about The Rider, including its lead character, a non-actor who actually suffered the accident that changed his character’s life. In fact, the entire cast of non-actors includes the very real people whose story is being told.
Another astonishment is the identity of the film’s director, Chloe Zhao, a woman born in China who fled as a teenager to high school in England and was a political science major in college. Only after a graduate degree in film from NYU did she find her own identity as a filmmaker and eventually to the story of this movie.
The Rider has also received an astonishingly high rating from both Metacritic (92) and Rotten Tomatoes (97% fresh). (I’m generally skeptical about film reviews from any one critic, but when a whole herd of them agree, I get interested.)
There is always plenty of evidence of the movies’ ability to put us on a funhouse ride and immerse us in chases, escapes, explosions, mayhem, and thrills. But every once in a while, the movies can let us get to know a character unlike anyone we’ve ever met before. It happened with Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and again with Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games. And from everything I’ve been able to find out about tonight’s film, it happens again with Brady Jandreau in The Rider. I hope you’ll come to find out.
Btw, I’m sorry about the lateness of this notification. When you have a job and a life, sometimes you’re the semi and sometimes you’re the pigeon. My featherless apologies.
Also, don’t forget to mark your fun-filled August calendar for discussions of Won’t You Be My Neighbor? on August 21 and Hearts Beat Loud on August 28. We’re heading toward the end of summer with a couple of crowd-pleasing heart warmers.
I hope to see you in The Historic Theater for the traditional 7pm showtime for The Rider and the subsequent discussion with free coffee, popcorn, and all the trimmings. (Disregard the “all the trimmings” part. That’s just the cliché machine talking.)
Paul Goodwin
TMHMG