Much like her Songs My Brothers Taught Me from 2015, Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is a minor-key docudrama shot on location in South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Intimate, dusty and authentic, the story incorporates the lives of cast members for a story about a promising bronco rider who is hurt in a rodeo accident. His career and dreams are in jeopardy. His manhood is in question. They shoot horses don’t they? They do, and they shoot horse riders too.
Zhao’s artful look into the American West is a lightly brooding winner. Clearly this isn’t her first time at the rodeo.
Courtesy: Brad Wheeler, Globe and Mail