The film begins and ends with brief dream sequences showing a man riding a horse. This evokes the idea that riding horses, for Brady and guys like him, is life’s big dream. But it’s a very precarious one. One bad break and it can be all over. The point is made devastatingly clear in several scenes where Brady visits Lane (Lane Scott), a bull rider who’s his best friend, mentor and personal hero. Lane has experienced a catastrophe that’s left him paralyzed and unable to speak. He communicates by spelling out words with his hands. His big message to Brady, delivered late in the film, is simple: don’t give up your dreams. A crucial idea, of course, but much easier said than done.
In the case of Lane too, there’s virtually no distance between the character and the guy playing him. Lane really is Brady’s best friend and in this condition of severe disablement, including not being able to speak. The scenes between the two young men are some of the most touching and delicate I’ve seen in any film, and all the more compelling for being so palpably real.
Watching “The Rider” a second time, I was struck that, even though it is a scripted film (written by Zhao), it doesn’t have a conventional story with character arcs and escalating conflicts and all those other things they teach in screenwriting class. Yet it is completely absorbing and satisfying as drama. The key to its success, I think, is Zhao’s profoundly sensual and instinctive way of immersing us in the character of Brady and his world.
Cinematographer James Joshua Richards, whose brilliant work here indeed earns him comparisons to the best of Malick, frames Brady tightly and follows him closely (as well as lighting him beautifully), creating a sense that we’re looking at things through his eyes. The most important of those things, the ones in his immediate environment, are his father Wayne (Tim Jandreau) and his sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau), who is autistic. Here again, Zhao works miracles in the terrific performances she gets from two real-life members of Brady’s family.
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