BIKERIDERS GET CHAPTER
Posted October 19th, 2024 at 7:12 pmNo Comments Yet
IN REVIEW
COMER, HARDY, BUTLER AND HARLEY MAKE COMPELLING DRAMATIZATION
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
The motorcycle club exists because of the riders love for their bikes and love for riding.
Director Jeff Nichols adapts a screenplay from a book of photographs and audio interviews of bike riders in the dramatization of a true story in The Bikeriders (2024)
Jodie Comer creates the narrative device as Kathy Bayer who is interviewed about the Vandals Motorcycle Club of Chicago, Illinois in 1975.
For openers, Kathy spots the ‘good looking guy at the pool table’ in a love at first sight occurrence that just needs to be pushed and cajoled a bit before the love birds get married five weeks later.
Austin Butler is Benny, ‘the good looking guy at the pool table’ who knows he has found his match and waits for Kathy to come out of the bar to give her a ride home late at night.
Tom Hardy slides in at the bar as well, as club founder, Johnny Davis.
Davis and his pals had been spending free time away with family and friends racing motorbikes around a dirt track until he gets inspired by Marlon Brando in the Wild One (1953) to form a bikeriders club.
The guys and their families belonged to a racing club. And now the guys and their families belonged to a bikeriders club.
Comer continues to compel the narrative forward by providing a voice over when the bikeriders take over the scenes. Kathy provides an outline for the camera to follow as she explains the history of the Vandals during the interview.
The original true story has been told through photographs and audio interviews by Danny Lyon. Mike Faist plays Lyon controlling the tone and atmosphere of the scenes.
Every so often, director Nichols shifts from the dramatization of the story Kathy is telling Lyon to the actual interview taking place 10 years later in California.
This second narrative subtly shifts the story to a documentary tone and atmosphere, which are really also dramatizations, except dramatizations of the interview.
Very nuanced aesthetics are created by shifting back and forth between the genres while also framing the outside architecture and capturing the detailed interior conditions of sets.
The motorcycles and cars of the era add a subtle layer of aesthetics, while the camera does not forget the little details like the stubby beer bottles drank by the boys and the delicate cardigans worn by the girls.
The picnics and campouts and/or beer fests organized by the bikerider club are used as plot reversals as the popularity of the Vandals spreads across the American Midwest and new characters and side stories enter the storyline.
The camera allows enough time for the actors to develop the characters without becoming too static before more action adventure compels the narrative forward.
Jodie Comer has mastered the independent, tough minded but devoted love bird, while Austin Butler has redefined cool and independence, with little subtle mannerisms like the way he smokes cigarettes.
The other characters have these little endearing characteristics as well like Kathy being at times as tough as a biker by popping off the caps of beer bottles but at the same time wanting to be this devoted wife wearing a rose coloured cardigan over a purple blouse to keep warm in those poor Chicago neighbourhoods.
Tom Hardy has an ultimate transformation into a character that is simultaneously intellectually interesting, in terms of what motivates him to lead the club, and worthy, as in tough enough, to be followed by the other bikeriders.
Kathy has the most to say, being interviewed for Lyon’s book, but the other characters say a lot without speaking much. Nichols does a good job in keeping the camera on the characters just long enough to create a connection.
Davis must lead with reason and sensibility without showing any weaknesses, since one of the rules that binds everyone together is that anyone can challenge Davis for the leadership, if they disagree with a decision he has made for the club.
Hardy shows Davis as a genuinely straight forward leader that does not reveal his emotions but who nonetheless has appropriate emotional responses to his environment. Davis shows his strength to a challenger by offering them the choice of fighting with ’fists or knives’. Sometimes the challenger decides on fists, and sometimes the challenger decides on knives.
Nichols follows the original club members until the original founding ideas of the club are no longer relevant, as more and more criminal elements enter the club.
Overall, the script is an interesting description of one chapter in America’s history that does not rest entirely on aesthetics or realism or authentic props and motorcycles and cars – which reflects the interesting character composition of the original bikeriders.
The Bikeriders is streaming on Apple.