Chloé Zhao’s (Songs My Brothers Taught Me) award-winning impressionistic drama casts real-life wrangler Brady Jandreau as a South Dakota cowboy struggling to chart a new course after a terrible injury sustained in the saddle. “A horse’s purpose is to run in the prairies; a cowboy’s is to ride.” So, what does a cowboy become when he can no longer ride? This is the question at heart the of The Rider, a compelling and wholly engrossing work that observes the aftermath of tragedy. Retaining a docudrama aesthetic, Zhao integrates the real lives of her actors into her storytelling and creates something truly transcendent that explores both notions of masculinity and the mythology of the American west.
We review The Rider in our September podcast. Listen below from the 6.20 mark.