Sundance 2021 Review: Jockey – “Part of it becomes a part of you”

Jockey is intimate and personal. Its visual structure is lyrical and golden. I couldn’t tell you really what amount of time the movie takes place over. It could be 1 week or 6 months, and it doesn’t matter. It’s a gritty dream. Unfortunately, the admittedly gorgeous visuals and flow are indebted to another film, which took me out from time to time. 

A once renowned, now just scraping by, jockey named Jackson (Clifton Collins Jr.) is making ends meet at a horse racing track in Phoenix. He picks up work from a trainer (Molly Parker) who may just have an opportunity for him that could reinvigorate his career. But, all of that becomes more complicated when a kid named Gabriel (Moisés Arias) shows up and claims to be his son. 

In the year of our lord 2017, a movie named The Rider began making its way around the festival circuit. Its director, Chloé Zhao, brought forth a naturalistic, achingly intimate portrait of a poor rodeo rider trying to continue riding despite a serious head injury. She has recently gone on to direct last year’s Nomadland, the upcoming Marvel film The Eternals, and apparently a Sci-fi Dracula Western or something? I don’t know. But, The Rider is a beautiful movie, and I couldn’t recommend it enough. The reason I bring all of this up is that Jockey is indebted to The Rider astronomically, almost comically: It’s visual aesthetic; basic story set up. Everything is very, very close. I’m not saying that Jockey is stealing, or that any movies about down and out horse folks can’t be made now because of The Rider. But, you gotta at least bury your inspirations a little harder than this, especially when you are trying to tell your own story that covers similar ground. It’s painfully obvious, and it takes away from the movie. It’s distracting. Look, I know everyone making movies in this style is ultimately trying to remake Badlands, but everyone has to have their own interpretation of Terrence Malick. When you take too much from something so recent, it has to be addressed. 

Alright. I’m done. Enough spot-the-difference/comparative stuff. I don’t want to get too bogged down in this. Jockey is pretty excellent, so let’s talk more about it, shall we? 

Right off the bat, Clifton Collins Jr. is absolutely superb in this. We spend virtually every second of the movie with him. It’s his movie. His portrayal of Jackson is so layered and restrained. You can’t take your eyes off him. The rest of the cast is excellent as well, several of which seemed to be non-actors, another similarity with The Rider (Okay. I’m done. That was the last one.) Describing Jackson, and by extension the movie itself, is difficult. You spend so much time living with this man and everything is so quiet and intimate, it can be hard to describe everything you’ve seen to someone who isn’t involved. It’s like trying to sum up, with any level of nuance or objectiveness, the last 4 months of your life. Where do you begin? What do you leave out? It’s all so personal and not nearly objective enough. I do suppose the struggle in finding an accurate description says something in and of itself though. It feels like I lived through all of Jackson’s hardships with him. I don’t have as much of an objective perspective as I normally do on a movie. The plot and all of that stuff could be conveyed, sure. But, who cares. What stuck with me were all the small things. The way Jackson reacts to finding out about his prospective son. The soul-crushing look on his face as a doctor is telling him some very bad news. Seeing him slowly come to terms with the idea of dying during a race. This is what has stayed with me. Watching this movie is like falling asleep and dreaming someone else’s dream. Part of it becomes a part of you. 

Outside of the movie’s poetry, we have the plot. Sometimes, it would begin to creep up in ways that feel very unassured. It’s as if the filmmakers weren’t confident in what they had, so they felt like they needed to infuse plot into the film to bolster it up. The movie doesn’t need it at all, and it always feels out of place. When characters are talking about “The Big Race” or whatever, it rings false. Not because it’s strange for them to talk about things happening in their world, or that it is even bad plotting. It rings untrue because the movie shifts and the filmmaking is covering these events like we really need to get a hold of what’s happening. We don’t. It’s a nitpick to be sure, but it’s odd to see these scenes of plotting inside a movie that is a lyrical portrait everywhere else. I’m much more interested in the musicality of the performances and visuals than any element of plot. 

With previously mentioned comparisons aside, the cinematography in Jockey is standout. Much of the movie is shot during golden hour, and they make the most of it. There’s a documentary quality to many of the film’s long, cut-up tracking shots. Like they didn’t block the scenes super tightly and what is happening in front of the camera is happening for real. It’s fantastic craft, and I contribute towards it a lot of the movie’s success, in partnership with the performances of course.

Jockey is great. Plain and simple. Clifton Collins Jr. is acting circles around this thing and deserves every bit of that Sundance Best Actor award he picked up for it. I have some nagging issues with some of the heavy-handed inspiration from The Rider, but it doesn’t take away from how wonderful this movie is on its own. As soon as this becomes available, give this thing a buy or a rent. It’s something special.