We missed him. Like his compatriot James Gray, director and screenwriter Jeff Nichols is one of the ambassadors of American independent cinema who depicts a bittersweet reality, between hopes and disillusionments.
At 45, he returns with The Bikeridersan adaptation of a 1967 collection of photographs and interviews by Danny Lyon, a reporter who chronicles the daily life of a motorcycle club in the Midwest.
“My brother Ben, a musician, gave me this album of black and white photos with fascinating testimonies presented as monologues in the middle.he explains. II realized that this journalist had sketched an extremely detailed and complete portrait of a subculture. At first glance, the book seemed romantic. But the world he described was almost palpable, thanks to his visceral approach. His interlocutors opened up to him without restraint.
He grafted a fictional plot onto it, following his characters for whom we feel empathy for almost a decade. We witness the tumultuous love story between Kathy (Jodie Comer) and Benny (Austin Butler), who has just joined a gang of black jackets riding big bikes, led by the charismatic Johnny (Tom Hardy)…
A chronicle of the end of an eminently nostalgic golden age
Jeff Nichols delights in recreating the 1960s in front of his lens in this chronicle of the end of a golden age that is eminently nostalgic, favoring staging over narration to evoke the transition from a group governed by brotherhood and a code of honor to a gang with criminal activities.
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Le spectre d’Easy Rider (1969) by Dennis Hopper hovers over a narrative hungry for freedom that also relies on the performance of its performers, led by Austin Butler. Elvis (2022), by Baz Luhrmann, had not yet been released when he was selected for casting. “Every look, every gesture and every movement is calculatedunderlines the filmmaker. There’s no denying that he’s going to be a superstar. Not because he’s handsome. He has a complexity that I’m only scratching the surface of.”
The Bikeriders **, By Jeff Nichols, with Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy. 1 h 56.
