Hardluck heartbreaker about Brady Blackburn, a once-rising ‘small pond’ rodeo cowboy now in fitful recovery from a traumatic skull injury that’s left him unable to ride without risking catastrophic re-injury. Played by broncho-buster/ horse trainer Brady Jandreau, whose real life spills & rehab suggested the slightly fictionalized storyline to writer/director Chloé Zhao, it’s less DocuDrama than American West Neo-realism: spare, elegantly realized, intensely moving. Shot in generous takes in the South Dakota Badlands, it reveals a life & culture that works around limited expectations, with damaged bodies & souls on every corner. Brady’s family is typical, a distant father unable to communicate his concerns, an autistic kid sister with special needs, a mother who died years back, a BFF living with permanent mental & physical trauma from rodeo falls, even the horses Brady keeps to train or as free-roving pets never truly out of danger. Yet the film comes across without self-pity, but with expectations of joy; unmet, but always on the back burner. Here & there, especially with the small ‘wolf pack’ of buds he hangs with*, Zhao overloads with a self-conscious behavioral quality that can feel calculated, but most of the film lives up to high expectations, offering a new world to think about.
DOUBLE-BILL: Three great rodeo films: Nicholas Ray/THE LUSTY MEN/’52; Sam Peckinpah/JUNIOR BONNER/’72; Carroll Ballard/RODEO/’69, a documentary included on most BLACK STALLION DVDs. (see below)
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Guitar-playing Cat Clifford a standout.
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