The Bikeriders is a movie about the fate of a character we hardly know anything about. Benny Bauer (Austin Butler) is an enigma -guarded and unfeeling, soulful and solitary …but untamably wild. And that’s the fact. The two most important people in his life try to tame him, unconvinced of its futility as they endeavour to pull him in opposing directions. One, he has an ingrained predilection towards, birthed of his environment and social grooming -but even it has its limits. He doesn’t ‘belong’ to either.
Jeff Nichols is fascinated by male social culture, and chose a compelling avenue to explore it with in this period film about a biker club based out of Chicago in the late 1960s through the early 70s. Taking cues in both storytelling and style from classic Scorsese movies, The Bikeriders is inspired by a book by photographer Danny Lyon, which showcased the community, lifestyle, and criminal undergrounds of biker gangs across the American Midwest during the supposed Golden Age of biker culture.
The film is framed through interviews conducted by Lyon, here played by Mike Faist, primarily with Kathy Bauer (Jodie Comer), who details her entry into that world and her perspective on it from meeting Benny on a whim at a club and marrying him not long after. Her relationship with him through the years would often be at odds with his commitments to the Vandals, embodied in their powerful leader Johnny (Tom Hardy) -who has singled out Benny as his protégé and unwilling successor.
The evolution of the Vandals is cast by Nichols as a microcosm of biker culture as it came to prominence in those mid-century decades. When Johnny started the club and even by the time Benny came to it, it was built on a foundation of community -inspired directly by The Wild One (to that end, Hardy’s accent in the film is something of a consciously flawed Marlon Brando impression). Slowly but surely, violence seeps in though as Johnny and his gang come to exploit the imposing image the Vandals cast, one that also intentionally evokes rebellion and anti-authority sentiment. Benny is something of a poster child for this reputation, part of what makes Johnny take a shine to him. While Benny for his part seems to reject leadership out of a very similar sense of values.
Seeing so much of the movie through Kathy’s perspective is really what allows such thoughtful examinations of social masculinity to take effect. Her insight on that world makes its order that much more fascinating. With a bearing of objectivity it is so much more stark the obligatory notions, the performance of this rugged masculinity that the bikers have to play. And both Johnny and Benny have wrapped themselves completely in their own interpretations of it. But where Johnny is working off of The Wild One, Benny of a younger generation has more the attitude of Easy Rider -and there is the source of their contention. But Benny remains loyal -the life of a rider is all he knows or can comprehend. Johnny gives him that, and reinforces his dependence. The psychology is most telling when after an altercation at a bar where Benny nearly had his foot hacked off, Kathy witnessed him cry for the first time -at the prospect that if he lost his foot he couldn’t ride anymore. Not long after, Johnny invites Benny on a long haul ride with the gang despite his foot needing rest for at least another six weeks. Kathy angrily confronts Johnny afterwards. “He’s mine, not yours!” Johnny offers that Benny does have a choice in the matter. But both he and Kathy know that to Benny’s mind he doesn’t.
It's more than just the masculine image that needs to be maintained, the Vandals are a kind of ritualistic brotherhood -and in 1960s America the only acceptable form of male bonding. Nichols respects that, even admires it, while all the while aware of its toxic undertones. Scenes of the bikers riding together on the open road, casually hanging out around a camp-fire in a field somewhere guzzling beer and cracking jokes -it is as escapist fantasy as these things come. And everyone is putting on an act. I referred to Scorsese's influence on Nichols; these scenes fairly intentionally evoke the dynamics of the guys from Mean Streets or the 'Goodfellas'. But in The Bikeriders it's earthier, more intentionally romantic -and comes with its own set of provocative insinuations. It's no accident that where Benny and Kathy exhibit little sexuality barring some chaste looks and romantic subtext, there is a homoerotic streak to Benny's relationship with Johnny -particularly on Johnny's end, whose assertion of dominance over Benny has a sexual character as well. Indeed, it's rather explicit in the scene where Johnny attempts to 'seduce' Benny into being his successor while in hushed tones and their faces so intimately close. We are asked to ponder how much of even the bikers' heterosexuality is wrapped up in performative masculinity.
Speaking of performance, Jodie Comer gives one of her best -with a Midwestern accent the same right distance between earnest and caricature as Frances McDormand in Fargo. She dukes it out with Hardy's Brando impersonation of an affect, which also proves far less a hindrance to his believability than initially seems. And between them, Butler proves himself exactly the right kind of retro cool hotshot the role requires -I suppose he had practice with Elvis. Faist continues his gradual upwards trajectory as the impartial observer, while Toby Wallace gives an interesting performance as an Indiana kid who first idolizes and then seeks to supplant Johnny. The gang around Johnny is given life by the likes of Boyd Holbrook, Damon Herriman, Emory Cohen, and Norman Reedus, with Nichols' frequent collaborator Michael Shannon also appearing as one of the more gonzo members of the Vandals.
Nichols himself directs the film with consistent, classical technique, very considerate of the actors and their space. He shoots scenes organically but not blandly, edits and structures the movie in dramatically rigorous ways, he lets moments breathe, and he never loses sight of where the story is coming from. He keeps much of the violence strategically implicit, especially in a pair of scenes in which Kathy finds herself surrounded by and under pressure from leering men -shot with a visceral sense of claustrophobia. Indeed, there is a tension baked into much of the movie, as machismo constantly threatens to (and in some cases does) boil over into fights. But as prevalent as this is a great sense of humour, taking some of the self-importance out of the gang while reaffirming their waggish interplay.
Over its span of around a decade, The Bikeriders opines to tell the story of the rise and fall of this apparent Golden Age of biker culture -at least as Kathy sees it. Whether or not those parameters are true, it is a compelling culture and era that Nichols examines with substantial intrigue and curiosity -and through a lens that interrogates the deeper connotations of masculinity that drove it. A movie that is nostalgic in its refreshing approach, and bathed in some romanticism in spite of itself.
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