Film Journal 2024: The Bikeriders

Film Journal 2024: The Bikeriders
Directed by Jeff Nichols 

I haven’t read the book, but I noticed a few think pieces detailing the films decision to make the female voice the narrator of the film as being one of the central differences between the adaptation and the male dominated story of the source material. Although I can’t rightly make the contrast, I can say that Comer’s complex persona was without a doubt a highlight and strength of the story.

The Bikeriders, a fictional take on a real life biker gang that became the seedbed for familiar entities like Hells Angels, actually caught me off guard with its studied and patient character study. More than a character study in fact, it’s also an examination of a culture, or a cultural and societal formation. That is not what I expected from the trailers, which sold it as a tonal exercise and aesthetically driven cinematic experience. I really resonated with what I ultimately got from this film, which uses Comer’s character, a largely outsider persona who embodies the different tensions inherent within this group of misfits looking for somewhere to belong beyond the constraints of the system that has determined their positions in the world, as a window into their emotional, social and personal psyches. Where there exists emotional repression, Comers embattled character carries the emotion. Where there exists irrationality and resistance to reason, she becomes the voice of reason on their behalf. Where there exists family discord, she models a familial spirit and commitment. All while being lost and embattled herself.

What makes this narrative choice so profound is that it never clouds the bikers from our view, rather it brings them into view with far more clarity and precision. The natural arc of the film occupies the different flavors and sensibilities of the gangs gradual development, allowing the third act to feel like a very different kind of film than the first section or the second. We move from opportunistic to optimism to defeat and complex resolution, anchoring the story in this movement from construction to disillusion and deconstruction, all the while propping up this societal structure as a microcosm of the universal human experience.

It also has one of the more arresting lines for me thematically of 2024, where Johnny, trying to capture the emotional stakes of everything that has been going on, reflects that “you cam try and give everything you have to something and it’s still going to do what it’s going to do.” The fact that this applies to one’s life is what gives this another layer, and it has been sticking with me ever since as I keep thinking about this film.

I never thought a film about bikers could play so broadly, but it’s an impressive feat that really speaks to the quality of its filmmaking and its performances.