Chris Knipp
06-22-2024, 08:53 PM
JEFF NICHOLS: THE BIKERIDERS (2023)
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20buta.jpg
AUSTIN BUTLER IN THE BIKERIDERS
Danny Lyon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Lyon) and the golden greasers called The Vandals
It is an unusual idea, to make art photographs done in the Sixties into a feature film. For great fans of the art of photography, this is an exciting event, and may fill one with trepidation. Is it a good idea? Will it work? Doesn't a movie violate the essential stillness and rectangularity of photo images?
But rest easy. Jeff Nichols performs the transfer so well you wonder why something like this hasn't been done before. Even as the first few moments unfolded, I was thinking: as a followup to Danny Lyon's book done , 1962-1967 - How about Larry Clark's Tulsa, completed 1968-1971? That's another legendary photography book of the period for making which the photographer got intimately involved with his subject. The result will be different. The maker got in deeper and darker. Danny Lyon, college boy, imbedded himself with a Midwestern motorcycle gang (Chicago, Cincinnati) whose members are tough-talking, semi-literate, working class men, and their women. Larry Clark became a speed freak in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As Clark writes in his intro about revisiting that scene, "Once the needle goes in, it never comes out."
Larry Clark's Tulsa is carrying involvement too far. But the motorcycle gang is dangerous and violent. The movie involves us and causes us to question what we're doing, just as Danny Lyon must have done. We constantly see Danny as a character played by Mike Faist (recently seen with Zendaya and Josh O'Connor in Guadagnino's Challengers) interviewing the bikers and their women with mike and tape recorder. Are these guys charismatic and exciting, or are they just violent, uneducated low-lifers? (Some of them may be proto-fascists, but the movie doesn't go into that aspect, which Lyon didn't start to notice till later.) Sometimes they just strike a pose, underlining the essentially visual nature of gang life, and film, as well as still photography, evoking some of the famous images in the book, like the iconic rider across the bridge turning forever backward. (Not everyone will get this; not everybody will know first off how to watch this film.)
Those deep questions aren't external, but embodied in the vivid cast (which has got to get a Best Ensemble Oscar nomination). Talking to the camera most is Kathy (English actress Jodie Comer, disarmingly real and period-specific, talking in a nasal Southside Chicago accent), who 24 hours after meeting Benny (Austin Butler) becomes his girlfriend.
Benny is a beautiful paradox, a tarnished, muddy golden boy, the idol and ideal of biker glamour. Benny's loyalty to the club defines him. When two toughs demand he remove his "colors" - his leather jacket with the club name on it - at a bar, he stonewalls them., then says "You'll have to kill me to get the jacket off," and they almost do. The first encounter of Kathy and Benny, though memorable, is hardly a meet-cute, more like a meet-mute. He just sits and stares at her, then at four a.m. gives her a ride back to her little modest house on his bike - and sits outside for 24 hours smoking and waiting. It works: she invites him in. As she recounts to Danny, in five weeks they were married.
Kathy says of Danny: "He took my breath away." He takes our breath away too. The six-foot Austin Butler, with his high head of dirty-blond hair, his long face, sparkling blue eyes, the rosy bloom on his cheeks, frequently back-lit, is memorialized forever in The Bikeriders as a rough motorcycle god. Danny is lawless and dangerous, and has no other life, while other, older gang members have actual jobs. But Danny is the one who everyone around him wants to be.
And then we come to the president of the club, Johnny (Tom Hardy, unforgettable), married, with a day job, but boss of it all. He loves Benny, with a homoerotic undertone, and wants to make him his successor. (Nothing doing.) Johnny makes all the tough decisions: the final one gets him killed when he faces off with a murderous young challenger,The Kid (Tom Wallace). Cigarette always fluttering in his lips as he speaks, Johnny's mumbling Midwestern drawl is authoritative, and for a while, it's the biker's "golden age," Kathy proclaims.
You can complain that not much happens in The Bikeriders. In a photography book not much does: it's an evocation of a lifestyle and a mood, a look, a feel. But that is what movies largely have always been. Time spent waiting for a deadly face-off is what passes in Westerns. Here there is the roar and the rumble of the motorcycles, the wonderful menace when a row of them approaches and circles around. The bikes look beautiful, dark, shiny chrome, and red, their specs and carburetors knowledgeably discussed. How accurate they are I cannot say: the ones in the Danny Lyon photos sometimes look longer, and they may not quite be "choppers," as claimed: but the crew really rides around on them, and never wear helmets. Strangely, yet perhaps perceptively, the writer for Screen Rant (https://screenrant.com/the-bikeriders-movie-review/) complains that as it moves along The Bikeriders "becomes burdened with story," and there is (he says) too much plot. As if the ensemble and the look and the mood were not what counts most throughout. They should be: but there is the undertone of Danny Lyon's story, which is his record of the lives of the bike gang, here called The Vandals (originally The Outlaws).
Jeff Nichols has always served mood and place in his films, whether they represent doom, southern laxness, or adolescent disillusionment. The tension and anger of the bikers here, the poses they strike, are captured so well for Nichols by dp Adam Stone. Whether there is too much or too little plot, what can be said for sure is that the actors are fine. Austin Butler, not disguised as Elvis with the voice, or Feyd in Dune II with the hairless egghead and another special voice, is more "himself" this time emerges finally as what he now is: a star. Master actor Tom Hardy anchors the piece in deep authenticity, Julie Comer likewise. The cast is so good the likes of Nichols regular Michael Shannon is hardly noticed; there is that depth. The bikes are characters too, as are the rough colors the bikers proudly wear, and the coatings of mud and dust everywhere. This is a movie so thick with atmosphere, any little clip exudes it and we bask in it. Too much plot? No, I don't think so.
Of course several things happen to Benny, beyond the pose. There is the California biker who joins the Vandals, Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus). There is the saga of Cockroach (Emory Cohen), a sincere fellow named for liking to eat bugs, who seems doomed but eventually achieves his dream of becoming a motorcycle cop. When Danny comes back years later and interviews Kathy again she learns, and we see, how The Kid has taken over and, though some old members of the Vandals still remain, it's a criminal gang now, stealing things and even killing people, which never happened before. Benny long ago walked away and now lives a good life. But above all The Bikeriders is a portrait of a mood, a time, and a gang as Danny Lyon captured it. They call what Lyon does "photo journalism." That is what he did before this, reporting on and being with the civil rights movement.
What Danny Lyon did here, and what he did later documenting the lives of inmates in Texas prisons, is far too committed and moving to be simply "journalism." In the world of photography, Danny Lyon is one of the great and deeply committed ones. The best thing that can come out of this movie, which does honor to everyone involved in it, is for a wider public to become aware of Danny Lyon and the uniquely special contributions of the great photographers. Call this a story, a picture book, even call it a remake of "Goodfellas": it's a masterful mingling of image, story and atmosphere packed with gems and is going to be one of the best films of the year.
The Bikeriders, 116 mins., debuted at Telluride Aug. 31, 2023, also BFI London, Mill Valley, Bath, Chicago, and a few other festivals; theatrical releases Jun. 19, 20-21, 2024 following in many countries. Screened for this review at Hilltop Century, Richmond, California Jun. 22. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-bikeriders/) rating: 71%.
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20buta.jpg
AUSTIN BUTLER IN THE BIKERIDERS
Danny Lyon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Lyon) and the golden greasers called The Vandals
It is an unusual idea, to make art photographs done in the Sixties into a feature film. For great fans of the art of photography, this is an exciting event, and may fill one with trepidation. Is it a good idea? Will it work? Doesn't a movie violate the essential stillness and rectangularity of photo images?
But rest easy. Jeff Nichols performs the transfer so well you wonder why something like this hasn't been done before. Even as the first few moments unfolded, I was thinking: as a followup to Danny Lyon's book done , 1962-1967 - How about Larry Clark's Tulsa, completed 1968-1971? That's another legendary photography book of the period for making which the photographer got intimately involved with his subject. The result will be different. The maker got in deeper and darker. Danny Lyon, college boy, imbedded himself with a Midwestern motorcycle gang (Chicago, Cincinnati) whose members are tough-talking, semi-literate, working class men, and their women. Larry Clark became a speed freak in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As Clark writes in his intro about revisiting that scene, "Once the needle goes in, it never comes out."
Larry Clark's Tulsa is carrying involvement too far. But the motorcycle gang is dangerous and violent. The movie involves us and causes us to question what we're doing, just as Danny Lyon must have done. We constantly see Danny as a character played by Mike Faist (recently seen with Zendaya and Josh O'Connor in Guadagnino's Challengers) interviewing the bikers and their women with mike and tape recorder. Are these guys charismatic and exciting, or are they just violent, uneducated low-lifers? (Some of them may be proto-fascists, but the movie doesn't go into that aspect, which Lyon didn't start to notice till later.) Sometimes they just strike a pose, underlining the essentially visual nature of gang life, and film, as well as still photography, evoking some of the famous images in the book, like the iconic rider across the bridge turning forever backward. (Not everyone will get this; not everybody will know first off how to watch this film.)
Those deep questions aren't external, but embodied in the vivid cast (which has got to get a Best Ensemble Oscar nomination). Talking to the camera most is Kathy (English actress Jodie Comer, disarmingly real and period-specific, talking in a nasal Southside Chicago accent), who 24 hours after meeting Benny (Austin Butler) becomes his girlfriend.
Benny is a beautiful paradox, a tarnished, muddy golden boy, the idol and ideal of biker glamour. Benny's loyalty to the club defines him. When two toughs demand he remove his "colors" - his leather jacket with the club name on it - at a bar, he stonewalls them., then says "You'll have to kill me to get the jacket off," and they almost do. The first encounter of Kathy and Benny, though memorable, is hardly a meet-cute, more like a meet-mute. He just sits and stares at her, then at four a.m. gives her a ride back to her little modest house on his bike - and sits outside for 24 hours smoking and waiting. It works: she invites him in. As she recounts to Danny, in five weeks they were married.
Kathy says of Danny: "He took my breath away." He takes our breath away too. The six-foot Austin Butler, with his high head of dirty-blond hair, his long face, sparkling blue eyes, the rosy bloom on his cheeks, frequently back-lit, is memorialized forever in The Bikeriders as a rough motorcycle god. Danny is lawless and dangerous, and has no other life, while other, older gang members have actual jobs. But Danny is the one who everyone around him wants to be.
And then we come to the president of the club, Johnny (Tom Hardy, unforgettable), married, with a day job, but boss of it all. He loves Benny, with a homoerotic undertone, and wants to make him his successor. (Nothing doing.) Johnny makes all the tough decisions: the final one gets him killed when he faces off with a murderous young challenger,The Kid (Tom Wallace). Cigarette always fluttering in his lips as he speaks, Johnny's mumbling Midwestern drawl is authoritative, and for a while, it's the biker's "golden age," Kathy proclaims.
You can complain that not much happens in The Bikeriders. In a photography book not much does: it's an evocation of a lifestyle and a mood, a look, a feel. But that is what movies largely have always been. Time spent waiting for a deadly face-off is what passes in Westerns. Here there is the roar and the rumble of the motorcycles, the wonderful menace when a row of them approaches and circles around. The bikes look beautiful, dark, shiny chrome, and red, their specs and carburetors knowledgeably discussed. How accurate they are I cannot say: the ones in the Danny Lyon photos sometimes look longer, and they may not quite be "choppers," as claimed: but the crew really rides around on them, and never wear helmets. Strangely, yet perhaps perceptively, the writer for Screen Rant (https://screenrant.com/the-bikeriders-movie-review/) complains that as it moves along The Bikeriders "becomes burdened with story," and there is (he says) too much plot. As if the ensemble and the look and the mood were not what counts most throughout. They should be: but there is the undertone of Danny Lyon's story, which is his record of the lives of the bike gang, here called The Vandals (originally The Outlaws).
Jeff Nichols has always served mood and place in his films, whether they represent doom, southern laxness, or adolescent disillusionment. The tension and anger of the bikers here, the poses they strike, are captured so well for Nichols by dp Adam Stone. Whether there is too much or too little plot, what can be said for sure is that the actors are fine. Austin Butler, not disguised as Elvis with the voice, or Feyd in Dune II with the hairless egghead and another special voice, is more "himself" this time emerges finally as what he now is: a star. Master actor Tom Hardy anchors the piece in deep authenticity, Julie Comer likewise. The cast is so good the likes of Nichols regular Michael Shannon is hardly noticed; there is that depth. The bikes are characters too, as are the rough colors the bikers proudly wear, and the coatings of mud and dust everywhere. This is a movie so thick with atmosphere, any little clip exudes it and we bask in it. Too much plot? No, I don't think so.
Of course several things happen to Benny, beyond the pose. There is the California biker who joins the Vandals, Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus). There is the saga of Cockroach (Emory Cohen), a sincere fellow named for liking to eat bugs, who seems doomed but eventually achieves his dream of becoming a motorcycle cop. When Danny comes back years later and interviews Kathy again she learns, and we see, how The Kid has taken over and, though some old members of the Vandals still remain, it's a criminal gang now, stealing things and even killing people, which never happened before. Benny long ago walked away and now lives a good life. But above all The Bikeriders is a portrait of a mood, a time, and a gang as Danny Lyon captured it. They call what Lyon does "photo journalism." That is what he did before this, reporting on and being with the civil rights movement.
What Danny Lyon did here, and what he did later documenting the lives of inmates in Texas prisons, is far too committed and moving to be simply "journalism." In the world of photography, Danny Lyon is one of the great and deeply committed ones. The best thing that can come out of this movie, which does honor to everyone involved in it, is for a wider public to become aware of Danny Lyon and the uniquely special contributions of the great photographers. Call this a story, a picture book, even call it a remake of "Goodfellas": it's a masterful mingling of image, story and atmosphere packed with gems and is going to be one of the best films of the year.
The Bikeriders, 116 mins., debuted at Telluride Aug. 31, 2023, also BFI London, Mill Valley, Bath, Chicago, and a few other festivals; theatrical releases Jun. 19, 20-21, 2024 following in many countries. Screened for this review at Hilltop Century, Richmond, California Jun. 22. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-bikeriders/) rating: 71%.