It is not strange that the narrative voice, the tip of the balance, the dominant figure of The Bikeriders is a woman. It’s not strange even though the film is set in Chicago in the Sixties, between the war in Vietnam and the flower children, at the crossroads between The wild one (1953) ed Easy Rider (1969), when girls were the silent wallpaper of a macho and patriarchal world even in positive feelings, a set of rebels like James Dean, riding a Harley Davidsonalways in conflict with mom and dad.
The burned youth of torn flags, of lost innocence, of violence against violence. The world told by the images of photojournalist Danny Lion in a famous book from 1967 that Jeff Nichols, director and screenwriter, born in 1978, reconstructs following the most classic and recognizable path of cinema on the road, that is, of the metropolitan western, of the rock fairy tale with the addition of nostalgia in good copy. The girl at the center of the pandemonium is called Kathy like the saloon babes (Jodie Comer). We immediately understand that she is an innocent angel destined to go through hell. We meet her while she joins a friend in a club crowded with bykers and makes her way like a good girl between pats on the bottom and threatening advances.
Returning home, he comes face to face with destiny. Kathy tells a video reporter with Mike Feist’s face about her love story with the silent Benny, an unsmiling centaurone with his motorbike, who in that place of reckless people drinks, smokes, plays billiards, preparing brawls and street battles.
Benny is the colt of a lawless biker group, the Vandals, under the orders of leader Johnny (Tom Hardy). Kathy, Benny and Johnny are three lost sheep, three human beings overwhelmed by loneliness who find motivation and hope in the group. “To take away my Vandals jacket, you’ll have to kill me,” Benny snarls at a rival clan’s hitman who tries to humiliate him. He will be beaten to a pulp but will be able to resist. Just like shortly afterwards, when an opposing mastiff completely broke his ankle. Every time Johnny saves himwith the intention of making him his successor at the top of the gang, not caring about the contrary opinion of Kathy who wants him all for herself.
Johnny acts like a brother, a father, perhaps like a lover. Meanwhile, Kathy’s impossible passion, the third side of the triangle, grows. She, a wife and a Red Cross nurse, is ready for love to become the devoted companion who awaits the lonely hero at home or accompanying his Benny to the Vandals’ alcoholic rallies. All three will end up victims of generational transition. Post-Vietnam America turns the page, the season of the byker knights of utopia is about to end. In quick succession the film traces solidarity, honor and respect, melodrama, love, tragedy.
The difficulty for Nichols was to make his characters credible, to elevate them from their negative potential without turning them into heroes. That is, maintaining a dry, linear, even cordial style, oiling the drama with a non-trivial soundtrack. There is always a border to cross in Nichols’ cinema: there is the trace of a humanity devoted to sacrifice, incapable of finding a final redemption. Not satisfied, Nichols puts a network of allusions to American current affairs under the viewer’s nose: disorientation, violent drift, the fall of ideals.
The Vandals are outsiders, children of the street and of vroom vrooom mythology: they do not respect the system because the system rejects them a priori. The operation succeeds due to Nichols’ rough-romantic balance, which uses a fascinating photographic grammar. But above all for the formidable understanding that is created between the protagonists: Austin Butler finally at one hundred percent of his potential after the half-failure with Elvisthen the revelation Jodie Comer who gives rhythm and tone to the film, holding it in his grasp like an orchestra conductor, finally the usual, very intense Tom Hardy, a scoundrel with a cracked voice and a blank look of those who know that the Vandals’ game will have to end and their leader will pay.
THE BIKERIDERS by Jeff Nichols
(USA, 2023, duration 116′, Universal Pictures)
with Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist
Rating: 3 ½ out of 5
In the rooms
