B | An aging jockey rides out the final stage of his career. Directed by Clint Bentley Starring Clifton Collins Jr, Molly Parker, and Moises Arias Review by Jon Kissel |
The life of a ‘that guy’ has got to be pretty frustrating. Not that character actors have hard lives necessarily, but they spend a lot of time being adjacent to serious, world-beating fame and power without being of it. People know their face but not their name, and most occasions when they’re recognized in public probably devolve into a humiliating guessing game of which movie the recognizer is thinking of. They make a solid living, but auditions and all the difficulty of that are still a thing. Clifton Collins Jr is one of these guys, cranking out an average of four credits a year for 3+ decades. Often memorable but rarely central, Jockey provides Collins with a starring vehicle about an old pro who’s been doing his thing for a long time without much to show for it. Collins’ real life is surely nowhere near as bleak, but there is some life imitating art in Clint Bentley’s sensitive feature debut.
Collins plays Jackson Silva, a middle-aged jockey whose years of experience haven’t been kind to his body. To professionally ride a horse is to have a lot of normal pleasures taken from you. Keeping weight off is a constant battle, such that even something as elemental as a cold glass of water needs to be swapped out for an ice cube. The satisfaction of health also isn’t allowed, as he’s a regular attendee at a jockey support group where other riders swap stories about concussions and broken bones. For all his dietary restrictions and physical pain, Jackson’s eked out enough of a living to have a trailer near the track and stables. This gets broken up by the arrival of Gabriel (Moises Arias), a young man who claims to be Jackson’s son, though for Jackson, that math doesn’t sound right. His suspicions get worn down out of a desire to make his life’s work and knowledge meaningful for the next generation.
That’s a standard middle-aged male arc in film, but any familiar story can get dressed up with technique or with environmental specificity. The latter is present in Bentley’s and Greg Kwedar’s script, which takes into account the hierarchies within horse racing. The owners are at the top, followed by the trainers, followed by the jockeys. Money flows up, shit flows down. The direction of the money means that humanity can’t flow with it, as represented by Molly Parker’s character Ruth. Based on her and Jackson’s body language, they’ve clearly surrendered to physical needs while watching the sun set, but she’s a trainer jumping ranks to become an owner. When it wasn’t her money on the line, she could throw Jackson a favor and put him on a horse even if he wasn’t the right man for the job or if he was shaky in a phase of recovery from this or that injury. When she’s an owner, Ruth can’t be friends in the same way. When Jackson unburdens himself to her about losing control of his hands, she can take it in as a friend and offer him sympathy, but she can’t put him on her horse. The way their relationship shifts and changes over the course of the film adds a layer of cruelty to Jackson’s life, where he can’t even be happy for his friend’s success. That hierarchy bounces back on him and Gabriel, an aspiring jockey who will soon be competing with Jackson for whatever he can get. He’s put all this time in, and he’s getting less comfortable with experience.
Bentley uses his script to show how difficult Jackson’s life is, but he uses his camera to show why he sticks with it. There’s a lot of magic-hour silhouette in Jockey, and a lot of peaceful solitude. If that’s one’s thing, the ice cube dinners might become more tolerable. The magic of being around horses doesn’t hurt either. Jockey wouldn’t be much of a horse racing film without scenes of horse racing. Since HBO’s Luck ended so abruptly, after a series of horse deaths possibly caused by the thrilling but dangerous way that series filmed races, projects have had to be thoughtful about how to avoid the same mistakes. Here, Bentley cheats, putting Collins on a horse (maybe) and filming him in tight close-up so that the sound of a race could be micced in later. To communicate that it’s not going well, someone is given the job of throwing dirt in Collins’ face. The film misses on an opportunity to show the race itself and its power to keep Jackson racing past his prime, but it’s an error borne of care for the animals.
With this opportunity for a leading role that’s received some amount of buzz, Collins doesn’t let it go to waste. He’s a charming lead, well-built for the role with the bearing of a Western stoic hero. He doesn’t play it as a noble sufferer, but as a guy prone to jerky behavior and stubbornness. Jackson’s someone who doesn’t come to vulnerability easily, which makes Ruth’s choices late in the film that much more painful. Jockey knows what it has with Collins, and all make the most of it. This is a strong character study for a guy who deserves better than a couple scenes in a tertiary role. Jockey won’t erase his ‘that guy’ status, but it might get him to the next thing that will. B+
That’s a standard middle-aged male arc in film, but any familiar story can get dressed up with technique or with environmental specificity. The latter is present in Bentley’s and Greg Kwedar’s script, which takes into account the hierarchies within horse racing. The owners are at the top, followed by the trainers, followed by the jockeys. Money flows up, shit flows down. The direction of the money means that humanity can’t flow with it, as represented by Molly Parker’s character Ruth. Based on her and Jackson’s body language, they’ve clearly surrendered to physical needs while watching the sun set, but she’s a trainer jumping ranks to become an owner. When it wasn’t her money on the line, she could throw Jackson a favor and put him on a horse even if he wasn’t the right man for the job or if he was shaky in a phase of recovery from this or that injury. When she’s an owner, Ruth can’t be friends in the same way. When Jackson unburdens himself to her about losing control of his hands, she can take it in as a friend and offer him sympathy, but she can’t put him on her horse. The way their relationship shifts and changes over the course of the film adds a layer of cruelty to Jackson’s life, where he can’t even be happy for his friend’s success. That hierarchy bounces back on him and Gabriel, an aspiring jockey who will soon be competing with Jackson for whatever he can get. He’s put all this time in, and he’s getting less comfortable with experience.
Bentley uses his script to show how difficult Jackson’s life is, but he uses his camera to show why he sticks with it. There’s a lot of magic-hour silhouette in Jockey, and a lot of peaceful solitude. If that’s one’s thing, the ice cube dinners might become more tolerable. The magic of being around horses doesn’t hurt either. Jockey wouldn’t be much of a horse racing film without scenes of horse racing. Since HBO’s Luck ended so abruptly, after a series of horse deaths possibly caused by the thrilling but dangerous way that series filmed races, projects have had to be thoughtful about how to avoid the same mistakes. Here, Bentley cheats, putting Collins on a horse (maybe) and filming him in tight close-up so that the sound of a race could be micced in later. To communicate that it’s not going well, someone is given the job of throwing dirt in Collins’ face. The film misses on an opportunity to show the race itself and its power to keep Jackson racing past his prime, but it’s an error borne of care for the animals.
With this opportunity for a leading role that’s received some amount of buzz, Collins doesn’t let it go to waste. He’s a charming lead, well-built for the role with the bearing of a Western stoic hero. He doesn’t play it as a noble sufferer, but as a guy prone to jerky behavior and stubbornness. Jackson’s someone who doesn’t come to vulnerability easily, which makes Ruth’s choices late in the film that much more painful. Jockey knows what it has with Collins, and all make the most of it. This is a strong character study for a guy who deserves better than a couple scenes in a tertiary role. Jockey won’t erase his ‘that guy’ status, but it might get him to the next thing that will. B+
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