Cowboy blues

The Rider (d. Chloe Zhao)

Nice small film that’s on the conventional side, Zhao and co. offer us a milder, more sensitive western. What’s so refreshing is how non-bombastic the film is with regards to Americana (though it’s still there); toxic masculinity; “race”; etc., while addressing these issues in its own way. (I kept thinking how Clint Eastwood would have filmed this?) The best feature of the film is the non-antagonistic relationship the protagonist has with his sister. American indie films rely on the heavily cliched family psychodramas that Zhao tones down to almost nil. There are the confrontations with the father figure, but they’re not so explosive as to give the actors to overact. It’s a tender portrait of a family and community that the film presents. Instead of the usual female love figure, we get a caring friendship. It’s so startling to see a western peopled by folks with mental and physical disabilities, with indigenous looking people, and a central hero who is kind and considerate. Note the small gestures like when the young girl shakes hands with him. Things like that. On the other hand, as a western, a truly problematic genre, the film still traffics in the romance of the landscape. There’s no discussion of settler colonialism and its effects on Native Americans. Every time a pretty landscape and lonely cowboy is featured, it done so to convey his heroism, instead of the pain and loss that results in settler colonialism. Can we move past this imagery? From this romance? Race is also unspoken, though it’s there as some characters are hinted as part Native, but so what? The movie would not have been made with an actor who doesn’t look phenotypically too Native American, and that’s the kind of western is what I’m looking for.

#2019 #13