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Riding is in Clifton Collins Jr.’s blood, as the star of the racetrack drama “Jockey” demonstrates, despite the fact that the skill is so rarely called for that we’ve almost never seen him demonstrate it. The grandson of a Western film and television actor, Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez, and the great-grandson of another actor, Jose Gonzales-Gonzales, Collins was born Clifton Gonzalez Gonzalez in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Los Angeles. Collins had a small role in the Western scenes of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and was a regular on the HBO series “Westworld” at the time of this writing. Jackson Silva, the film’s veteran jockey character, was created by Clint Bentley, the film’s co-writer and first-time director who grew up around horse tracks because his father worked as a jockey.
Providing this background information helps to explain what you can expect to see when you watch “Jockey”: a film with little in the way of a plot, but which immerses you in a richly detailed world created from firsthand observations, and which unites itself around the collaboration of Bentley and Collins as a result of their shared vision. Abel Ferrara and Willem Dafoe have been working together since Ferrara’s sobriety, and their collaboration is a mind meld for the ages in the independent film world.
Collins is convincing right from the start. Whenever he is shown in silhouette (which is frequently), he has the sinewy outline of a rodeo rider or caballero from old films where men slouched with a cigarette or blade of grass in their teeth. He exudes the same steely competence that Steve McQueen brought to Western dramas such as “Nevada Smith,” “Junior Bonner,” and “Tom Horn,” among others. Jackson is a seasoned rider who is nearing the end of his professional career. He’s macho, but he’s also laid-back. In order to avoid getting into trouble, he doesn’t puff his chest out in an attempt to impress anyone. He already has enough anxiety issues to deal with without adding to them.
Aside from a horse trainer named Ruth (Molly Parker, who appeared in “Deadwood”) who has been Jackson’s friend for years and appears to be inclined to move things into a different category, there aren’t many surprises in terms of the story. A young newcomer named Gabriel (Moisés Arias) is also seen hanging around the racetrack. He’s the right height and weight to be a jockey. The man eventually admits to following Jackson around the riding circuit in order to keep up with him because he believes he is the product of a 19-year-old affair Jackson had with another woman and believes it is his destiny to join his father in the world of motorcycle racing.
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Also involved are a brilliantly gifted horse, a major race that is about to take place, and a diagnosis for Jackson that serves the same purpose as the scenes in all of the “Rocky” movies where a doctor warns Rocky Balboa that if he gets back in the ring, he will go deaf or blind, suffer brain damage, or lose a kidney (or was it Adonis Creed?). What do you think a guy like Jackson will do when he hears such shocking information? Say something like, “Thank you for your honesty, doc,” and hand over his riding crop?
Parker and Collins have a good working relationship. Jackson’s trailer serves as an object lesson in how to make a small space feel large: by framing the setting in ways that give you a sense of what it does to a person’s energy when they live alone in it, and then by showing how that energy changes when you add a second person with a different vibe to the conversation.
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Plot twists are not the reason why you watch a film like this. This has more in common with one of those Clint Eastwood mid-career, medium-budget films in which he played a worn-out veteran of some profession or another who gave it his all and had a few shining moments but was approaching his fifties or sixties and realizing that he had been only very good, not great, and that the only thing he has to show for all those years of hard work is a job that he was happy doing.
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There’s also a nod to the sports film tradition as practiced by Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham,” “Tin Cup”), who liked to focus on guys who had passed their prime and who didn’t care whether they won or lost because he was always more interested in the culture of sports, and in the way athletes interacted with one another as well as with their friends, family, and the supporting professionals in their little world. We don’t really see any races in this film—at least, not in the way that we do in other racetrack movies. Due to the lack of funds and the risk of injuring their star, they come up with creative ways to make the races feel like internal, emotional events, or even ellipses in the story, similar to when soldiers in a play about war head off to battle before intermission and then return afterward, with the audience being able to tell whether they won or lost by the way they carry themselves.
The film was shot on location at a working racetrack, and it features a diverse cast of non-actors alongside professional actors, most notably in a beautiful scene in which racers gather to discuss their injuries. Jackson sits and listens as the others describe the hardships they have faced as a result of their decision to devote their lives to a job they adore but which pays little and demands so much of them.
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In this drama, journalistic or documentary values are emphasized along with the “epic naturalism” of films by directors such as Terrence Malick and Chloe Zhao, in which the camera is just as interested in flowing water, a sunset, a flock of birds, or a line of silhouetted horses as it is in what the characters are doing or saying. The score, composed by Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National, is in the same vein, employing thrumming, humming, and percolating soundscape effects to give the impression that time has been compressed or expanded, or has otherwise ceased to be quantifiable.
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Using an epic, narrow frame to convey the modesty of the characters’ lives, Adolpho Veloso’s remarkable cinematography is a highlight of this film. The actors’ reactions and body language are captured in such a way that they become a part of the landscape rather than performers strutting on a real-world stage, as is the case in this film. We believe they live and work in this location, and we’ve been invited to sit close by and observe their existence firsthand.
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