Critic’s Choice: ‘The Rider’ is a moving portrait of Lakota cowboy life
Chloé Zhao’s deeply moving film “The Rider” follows the long, difficult physical recovery of Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau), a young Lakota cowboy from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation who suffers a severe, likely career-ending head injury after falling off his horse. Jandreau gives a wonderful performance, but he isn’t just playing a character; he’s starring in a loosely fictionalized version of his own personal experience.
Zhao dramatizes that experience with rough-hewn realism and exquisite lyricism, mixing documentary and narrative filmmaking techniques in a way that never feels anything less than intuitive. “The Rider,” now available on DVD and Digital HD, tells a beautiful, melancholy story about learning to let go — of not just a dream but also a philosophy, a culture, an entire way of life.
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