2018 Top Ten Film List #1 The Rider

Brady Jandreau on the set with director Chloé Zhao

director Chloé Zhao

THE RIDER               A                    

USA  (104 mi)  2017  ‘Scope  d:  Chloé Zhao

An essential work, an elegiac and ferociously personal film shot on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, home of over 30,000 Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe members, not far from the Badlands, one of the most impoverished areas in the United States, where an endless landscape reveals the vast emptiness, but also a sacred beauty about something Native Americans hold dear, living in harmony with nature, where riding horses across the open plains is about the most natural thing in the world.  Honoring a way of life that has existed for countless generations, the film is based on the real-life experiences of Brady Jandreau, an Indian rodeo cowboy who at age 20 survived a near-fatal head injury after being trampled by a horse in 2016.  Playing himself (though the last name is changed to Blackburn), he is a handsome hero, showing the full range of his character throughout, generous to a fault, kind and open-hearted, with a fierce protective streak for his younger 15-year old sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau), who is autistic, yet easily remains one of the more endearing and cheerfully upbeat characters in recent memory, while his father Wayne (Tim Jandreau) is sternly authoritative, yet financially challenged, renting a trailer out in the open plains, where it’s not easy making a living in such a desolate place.  Fueled by poverty and addiction, the unemployment rate on the reservation hovers around 80%, the suicide rate is over four times the national average, while 49% of the population is on Food Stamps.  Life expectancy, 48 years for men and 52 for women, is the second-lowest in the western hemisphere, behind only the poorest nation, Haiti, tuberculosis and diabetes rates are eight times the national averages, while the cervical cancer rate is five times more than the U.S. average.  The infant mortality rate is 300% higher than the national average and the teen suicide rate is 150% higher than the national average.  Addiction is endemic, where up to two-thirds of adults live with alcoholism, while one in four children are born with fetal alcohol syndrome, a neurological birth defect that causes irreversible physical and emotional defects that permanently scar the child.  Most attribute the problem to a small town that sits 250 yards across the South Dakota state line, Whiteclay, Nebraska, population 12, which has been sitting there for over 100 years with four convenience stores that sell approximately 4 million cans of beer per year pouring exclusively into the reservation, which amounts to 11,000 cans of beer per day, literally feeding and profiting off of Indian addiction, despite the fact that it has been a dry reservation by tribal ordinance for over 120 years.  Recently the Nebraska state liquor commission voted to temporarily revoke all four licenses to sell liquor in Whiteclay, while in September 2017, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled unanimously to keep Whiteclay’s liquor stores closed (Liquid genocide: alcohol destroyed Pine Ridge reservation – then they ...).  While that is a cultural aside, it generates a picture of poverty unlike any other, setting the stage for why young male pride means so much to an Indian nation. 

Jandreau was one of several Lakota cowboys the director met while shooting her low-budget debut feature, Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015), spending four years on the Pine Ridge Reservation making that film.  Watching him train unbroken horses, however, mesmerized by how easily he calms wild horses, Zhao could see he has a gift, suggesting they make a film together, where much of the strongest footage allows viewers to see him in his element, guided by his own instincts, beautifully capturing the majestic quality of the animal, as throughout history, even before the arrival of the white man, Lakota Sioux Indians have revered horses, leading nomadic lives following rivers and migrating herds of buffalo throughout all seasons of the year.  Stripped down to its essentials, Jandreau epitomizes the hard-scrabble way of life that exists here, who at a tender young age has reaped the rewards of rodeo riding, collecting ribbons and medals and prize money, along with the cowboy accoutrements collected along the way, belts, boots, chaps, ropes, and Stetson hats, along with signature jackets that memorialize certain events.  Dressed in his cowboy finest, Jandreau is the spitting image of frontier strength and independence, knowing things only a handful of others can appreciate, among an exclusive club of young Indian rodeo heroes, seen in all the cowboy magazines, someone kids can look up to, a down to earth mythical hero that lives right there amongst them.  But that all changed after suffering such a serious injury, cracking his skull, requiring a surgically implanted metal plate, leaving a large gash on his head, where early on we see him using a knife to gruesomely pick out the stitches in his head.  Some of the aftereffects include seizures that travel down to his right hand, freezing up on him, where he can’t unloosen his grip, forced to peel his fingers off one by one.  The opening sequence, however, is an experimental montage of stomping hooves and the defiant independence of wild horses running free, perhaps idealized in their beauty, which turns out to be a dream leading to the opening credits, with Jandreau lying in his hospital bed.  It may feel improbable for a young Chinese-American woman to have such complete access to an Indian reservation, but she claims it’s easy for her to be accepted, eventually fitting right in, as she poses no threat.  Born in Beijing, Zhao was sent to boarding school in London before finishing high school in America, inspired by viewing Wong Kar-wai’s HAPPY TOGETHER (1997), watching it again before film shoots, eventually attending film school at NYU.  While Jandreau, his family and friends, all play themselves, this resembles the fictionalized documentaries of Jia Zhang-ke, revealing a searing authenticity with brief flashes of fiction thrown in to change or alter the mood.  In this case, it’s almost entirely real-life, still recovering from his injury, with a bare-bones script written by the director to add narrative fluidity, but very few alterations, one of which involves Jandreau’s best friend, Lane Scott, another heavily decorated rodeo bull rider who was left paralyzed, unable to speak after an unfortunate accident.  In real-life, this occurred as a result of a 2013 car crash, but the film romanticizes his injury, suggesting a bull rolled over him in competition, where he remains a mythical hero.  With the words “Say I won’t, and I will” tattooed on his back, Lane is a central figure in Brady’s life, both small town heroes and cut from the same cloth.  The patience he displays in visits to the rehab center with Lane are beyond belief, able to read letters conveyed through his fingers, extending them to words and phrases, where the genuine warmth and affection on display express something beyond friendship, beyond words, that could only be described as a profound and inexpressible love.        

What makes this film so unique is the sacred territory it inhabits, like entering the Terrence Malick realm, where horses and the open plains define what it is to be human for a Lakota Sioux Indian, a thread that runs throughout this film, which is heartbreakingly real.  Like his friend Lane, Jandreau’s rodeo days are over, or so he’s told over and over again, yet he knows that he’s meant to ride horses, “just as a horse is meant to run across the prairie,” where he has a will of an athlete to overcome all obstacles, to reach the winner’s circle, to show what it means to be a champion.  Jandreau feels like it’s in his blood, that it’s as essential as the air he breathes, as it’s the one thing he excels at, reaching transcendent heights in the rodeo ring, if only for a brief moment, where he exudes courage and an indomitable spirit, refusing to allow mere mortality to keep him from reaching the hallowed grounds of the gods.  Not sure if anyone has loved something as much as this kid loves horses, dreaming of them night and day, where the intoxicating visualization by cinematographer Joshua James Richards, the director’s life partner, remains ravishingly elevated throughout, with melancholic music by Nathan Halpern, turning this film into an elegiac memoriam for all that’s been lost, as after reaching such exalted heights, with Brady and Lane watching video footage over and over again of their rodeo exploits, reliving their proudest moments, Brady has to descend back down to the lowly state of working a soulless job as a supermarket clerk, stocking the shelves, doing dish work detail, mopping up the grounds, where it’s a humiliating challenge just to be an ordinary human living on a pittance part-time wage.  Yet in the same breath, the time he spends with his mentally challenged sister is priceless, listening to her sing songs, promising to look after her, yet she’s the one that places little stick-em gold stars on his body as he sleeps.  Brady continually argues with his tough guy father, who calls him stubborn, refusing to listen to anybody, who thinks he has a death wish, yet without a word one day buys his son a spectacularly beautiful unridden horse that he’s got his heart set on, a gesture so movingly open and revealing.  If only the road to heaven were paved by good intentions.  But this film is also filled with heartbreak, as near the beginning, Wayne is forced to sell Brady’s favorite horse, which is like giving away your best friend.  And just when Brady’s health progress looks promising, as he’s back training horses, something he loves to do, his hand freezes up, where he can’t let go of the reins, allowing a horse to bump him in the head, causing a horrible setback, where he literally can’t get back on a horse again.  Take away the thing someone loves the most and see how they respond.  Particularly in this poverty-ridden culture, where there are so few role models that kids look up to, Brady’s bold heroism becomes his internalized anguish, his cross to bear, though perhaps also his salvation.  Taught to fight through pain and weakness, he struggles against admitting any signs of vulnerability, yet ultimately the film is about scars and broken spirits, expressed with such beautiful lyricism and tenderness, a picture of poetic spirituality, where what it means to be a man shifts 360 degrees literally overnight, where it’s like learning to walk again, or imagine John Wayne in a John Ford western suddenly unable to ride a horse, as it poses a risk to his own life.  A profoundly affecting work, unvarnished, void of artifice, probing under the surface, finding an altogether new language to express the unimaginable, Brady Jandreau is one of the untold stories that cinema can bring to light, with Zhao admirably doing him justice, finding his genuine nature, exploring that core inner realm of pride and glory, offering a sobering portrait of an identity crisis that literally asks and answers the existential question of what it means to be an Indian in today’s world after the things you do best have been stripped away, essentially a mirror image of the plight of the American Indians after the inexhaustible reach of their land was taken away by a policy of genocide and Manifest Destiny.     

Brokeback Mountain

Matthew Shepard

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN             A            
USA  (134 mi)  2005  d:  Ang Lee

Every once in a while a film comes along that changes our perceptions so much that cinema history thereafter has to arrange itself around it.  Think of Thelma and Louise or Chungking Express, Blow-Up or Orlando — all big films that taught us to look and think and swagger differently.  Brokeback Mountain is just such a film.  Even for audiences educated by a decade of the New Queer Cinema phenomenon — from Mala Noche and Poison to High Art and Boys Don’t Cry — it’s a shift in scope and tenor so profound as to signal a new era. 

—B. Ruby Rich from The Guardian, September 23, 2005, B Ruby Rich on Brokeback Mountain | Film | The Guardian 

If you can’t fix it, Jack, you gotta stand it. 

—Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger)

Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana adapt a 1997 E. Annie Proulx short story from Close Range, Wyoming Stories, extending the parameters of the original story, which in the book was narrated in third person by the character Ennis Del Mar, while retaining the haunting poetry on the page.  It’s hard not to remember that one year after the story was published on the night of October 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a young 21-year old gay man from Laramie, Wyoming, about the same age and near the same place as the two portrayed in the story, was lured away from a campus bar by men who told him they were gay, tied to a fence, pistol whipped and beaten, then left for dead in near freezing conditions where he eventually died.  This horrific murder brought national and international attention to hate crime legislation at the state and federal levels, where in October 2009, the United States Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (commonly called the “Matthew Shepard Act”), and on October 28, 2009 President Barack Obama signed the legislation into law.

In a tale of anguished souls living in the shadows of similar lore, perhaps Ang Lee’s most heartbreakingly tender film, shot largely in the pristine mountainous wilderness of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto capturing its raw beauty, this is a touchingly understated film with few words, using silence and natural sounds, with exquisite pacing where the situation onscreen explains itself.  From the opening shots of a desolate town in Signal, Wyoming back in the summer of 1963, we’re immediately immersed in a dusty shithole of a town that looks totally run down, where the space is larger than the people who inhabit it.  Two guys are waiting for a job without speaking.  Local rancher Dennis Quaid tersely issues them their instructions in a cowboy vernacular that is barely understood by the uninformed.  One guy tends to the sheep high up on Brokeback Mountain, sleeping without a fire out under the stars, supposedly protecting them from intruders or outside elements like coyotes, protecting the rancher from losses to his herd, while the other picks up weekly food and supplies, and tends to the camp, where both meet only at breakfast and dinner.  Jake Gyllenhaal is Jack Twist, a down on his luck rodeo rider, while Heath Ledger is Ennis Del Mar, a tightlipped, dirt poor ranch hand, both high school drop outs with few prospects, neither yet twenty.  Interestingly, few words are spoken between them, as the wonder of the outdoors literally fills the screen with extraordinary natural beauty, where the sheep roam in perfect harmony through the lush, pastoral landscape.  Before they know it, with the help of several bottles of whisky, words are flowing, surprising themselves, as they naturally feel an ease with one another, which leads to hard-fought-against romantic inclinations.  They spend a summer together, which haunts them for the rest of their lives, as despite the hardships it’s easily the most intensely personal experience they will ever know.

Through the passing of time, they each get on with their lives, as Jack rides the rodeo circuit in Texas and marries Lureen, Anne Hathaway, a cowgirl who catches his eye, whose father has earned a fortune selling farm equipment, while Ennis marries a local sweetheart Alma, Michelle Williams, a revelation in the film who happens to be Ledger’s real-life wife, adding warmth and personal intimacy, where their scenes together feel naturally lived-in and real.  Neither man is particularly good at fatherhood or family affairs, as each comes from scarred, emotionally deprived backgrounds.  Four years later Jack sends notice of a visit and arrives on Ennis’s doorstep one day, where his wife catches them kissing in an intense embrace, but says nothing.  When they leave together on a supposed fishing trip, pain is etched all over her face, which has a ripple effect to the whole family.  This film expresses the inexpressible.  Ennis knows the times and knows that in this country, neighbors wouldn’t stand for two guys running a ranch together, “This thing grabs on to us again in the wrong place, we’ll be dead,” so their relationship is haunted by a perpetually unfulfilled longing, like a lost Eden, split between the freedom of the wilderness and the restrictions placed on them by a sexually repressed society.  Up until now, the film has a kind of Douglas Sirk, wrenchingly melodramatic feel to it, where the men’s lives unravel and become unhinged in ways that on the surface resembles anyone else’s disappointments, yet their secret visits remain under wraps, something no one can talk about. 

Once the years take their toll on the men’s lives, their children grown, their home life in ruins, their visits together a painful reminder of all that they’re missing, only then does the film elevate itself and reach for more, in a stunning confessional scene where they can’t seem to leave each other, where Jack blurts out “I wish I knew how to quit you,” surrounded by the majesty of spectacular scenery, where men are reduced to tears, tiny creatures dwarfed by the immensity of it all, yet what matters most about these individuals suddenly surges to the forefront, demanding our attention and our respect.  It’s a startling moment that takes us a bit by surprise, stunned to realize the complexity of their lives and what they mean to each other only at that moment.  It’s achingly real, and it continues on that brilliantly developed high plain until the end.  While the film is beautifully understated, where the marketing scheme downplays the gay aspect and suggests a “universal” love story, it is unquestionably a gay sexual attraction and love affair, with explicit sex scenes that are both brutally rough and surprisingly tender, where Ennis mumbles “This is a one-shot thing we got goin’ on here,” though both are filled with the Western cowboy ethic that forbids even the thought of such things, where in their minds it’s associated with sordid stories of violence and murder.  Therefore it’s a love kept under wraps, continually closeted and under denial, disguised as a fishing trip, yet it’s a lingering and haunting presence in their lives, where each ends up in a loveless marriage, where loneliness defines their every aching moment, especially Ennis, who only grows more isolated and alone after leaving his wife, eking out a barebones existence working seasonal cattle roundups.  When he receives occasional visits from his older teenage daughter who’s nearly grown up, Alma Jr. (Kate Mara), seen at about the same age as he was in the opening, the film comes full circle, where she’s going her own way and making her own choices. 

A story of thwarted love, eloquent in its mute despair, where gay love has never been so sacred, yet what’s most alluring is the magnificent natural beauty of the Edenesque world that surrounds them, where the luxurious color of 35mm film never looked better, making the digital look of what passes for film today look antiquated and ugly, where the entire industry lost its soul by selling out the opulence and grandeur of real film.  Despite their distance, Jack in Texas and Ennis in Wyoming, they come together again and again, year after year in the most remote locations, knowing that if caught they could be hog-tied and murdered by fellow cowboys (a reminder, as B. Ruby Rich explains in discussing the tragedy of Matthew Shepard, of exactly how provisional and geographically specific contemporary tolerance remains), before heading back out into the “real” world of emptiness, alcoholism and disappointment.  There is a plot twist near the end where Ennis’s post card to Jack is returned marked “deceased,” a dumfounding moment that sends him into a tailspin, reflected in the marvelous use of a flashback style moment where he imagines what actually happened as he’s listening to Lureen dispassionately describe what happened to Jack over the phone.  For Lureen it’s a moment over and done with, while for Ennis, the loss is indescribable.  Heath Ledger is astonishing, especially at the end, as he perfectly captures the essence of the poetry that wordlessly expresses love and longing.  The visit to Jack’s parents house, so quiet and spare, is near perfect, elevating the spirit of the man who isn’t there to the forefront, reminding us of the unfathomable depths of the still unexplored regions of love.  It’s a devastating moment and one of the most powerful scenes in all of cinema, tragically haunting the viewer for years to come with weighted emotions and images permanently etched into the core of our very souls.    

Drought (Cuates de Australia)

filmmaker Everardo González








DROUGHT (Cuates de Australia)        B                     

Mexico  (90 mi)  2011  d:  Everardo González

Four years in the making, where the filmmaker immersed himself in the arid regions of northeastern Mexico, known as Cuates de Australia in Coahuila, from 2004 until 2007 when he actually began filming.  The director’s father was a veterinarian, so his earliest memories are cattle ranches, the subject of this abstract film examining mankind’s place in such a hostile and unforgiving environment.  Told without any narration or talking heads, this is more a visual meditation on ranchero culture, where what’s immediately clear is the mix of beauty in the landscape with wrenching human travail, where a son decides to forego college in order to work the land with his father, who’s getting older and can’t do it alone, so for the son there’s no hesitation or second guessing, though the viewers are well aware of his dreams being deferred.  What’s inspiring, however, is how he quickly adjusts his dream to wanting to learn to be a better cowboy, where in his community, being a cowboy is more useful or valuable than becoming a lawyer.  Shot by the filmmaker in a cinéma vérité style where people occasionally acknowledge the presence of the camera, a constant reminder of an outside force in their midst, this is a film essay on what amounts to a human migration cycle, set in a dry and remote area that is so isolated there are no real roads, no communications, and no electricity.  Here a group of ranchers work tirelessly to survive in the desert before the water dries up, utterly dependent upon the land, barren and unforgiving though it may be, literally hiding from death, waiting and hoping for the rains, eventually turning into a mass exodus escaping a drought that leaves death in its wake, where it seems the harsher the environment, the closer the connection is between the land and its inhabitants.  This is an ongoing struggle between man and the environment to see who will rule.

The rhythm of the film is one of continual observance without comment, where kids know one another since childhood, including their future marriage partners, where so many teenage girls are seen sitting around with young babies in their laps and where testosterone-driven boys aggressively taunt and challenge one another as a matter of routine.  When the water is present, the ranches can operate, though families make daily trips to the storage wells as do the livestock, initially seen standing in the plentiful reserves, which quickly diminish over time, forcing ranchers to continually search for new water supplies until they all completely dry over, leaving nothing to live on and a landscape littered with the presence of death.  Interestingly, the desolation of the region leaves it unsoiled by the larger narco drug trafficking wars wreaking havoc with the rest of Mexico, as marijuana or poppy plantlife will not sustain itself here, and even if it could, the openness of the region is accessible to all, leaving noplace to hide anything of value.  When a census worker comes to ask a woman what possessions she has, a trace of sarcasm can be heard in her voice when she answers “We have nothing.”  So what they do have is another precious commodity—time, creating close-knit families who can actually sit down and talk to one another, where everyday they spend time with their families and grandparents.  The relationship with water can manifest itself in strange and mysterious ways, where they play a card game known as entripar where whoever loses must drink two glasses of water until they get sick, where one boy is seen running outside the house to vomit.  In other images, water is used by the Priests to baptize the young children, to purify and bless their futures. 

In good times, the community turns to sporting events, always involving horseriding, where there’s nothing like watching teenagers scope one another out on horseback.  One of the major events is a horse race celebrating the baptism of children, dramatically presented here, where the rivals are such equals it is impossible to tell the winner, where fights between families break out, likely fueled by plenty of beer drinking and a bit of wagering ahead of time, even targeting the director and his film crew, turning into a bit of a fiasco. When the water supply ends, however, livestock begin to die, where ranchers and their families can do little more than watch the skies for signs of rain, where abandoning their homes is an accepted reality, turning into Depression era images of The Grapes of Wrath, where truckloads filled to the brim with children and vital possessions search for makeshift communities near water supplies where presumably (since the camera doesn’t follow) they survive in hobo camps reminiscent of the 1930’s.  Once the winds pick up and a surge of lightning fills the darkened skies, hail and rain literally plummet from above, breathing life back into a scorched earth and the life cycle begins all over again.  The director is overly fond of an especially primitive sounding music heard throughout by Pablo Tamez and Matias Barberis, apparently 1970’s a capella trio recordings of cantos cardenches, a particularly authentic style of folk song where one might recall impoverished church choirs of only a few singers, where hymns often have the ache of rural desolation in the weary voices.  There are some hard to view images and queasy moments where viewers may feel helpless to the dire circumstances, but the director is unsparing in the visual scope of his objective eye, where overall he artfully projects the unique harshness of surviving in such an arid and isolated region.