Jodie Comer

THE BIKERIDERS: they ride, drink and fight, and yet we care

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Photo caption. Jodie Comer and Austin Butler in THE BIKERIDERS. Courtesy of Focus Features.

The Bikeriders is Jeff Nichols’ engrossing exploration of the culture of a 1960s Midwestern motorcycle gang and its (unfortunate) evolution. The source material is a book by a photographer who embedded himself with a real biker gang, and taped interviews as well as photographing them.

The gang was founded by Johnny (Tom Hardy), inspired by a TV rebroadcast of The Wild One, in which the biker played by Marlon Brando is asked what are he is rebelling against, and replies, Whadda you got? The bikers are a collection of misfits who share an ethos of breaking every available rule. Of course, none of these guys know what an ethos is, let alone intend to have one.

The most reckless biker is Benny (Austin Butler), whose girlfriend Kathy (Jodie Comer) is fiercely in love with him, but at most agnostic about the biker lifestyle. We see the story of the 1960s gang in flashback; Kathy, from the 1970s, narrates the story.

The Bikeriders bears out Nichol’s great gift as a storyteller – recognizing the humanity in his characters. I guarantee that I would, in real life, not care one whit about any of these characters. But, in The Bikeriders, I did care and was deeply invested in them.

Nichols’ previous films Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, Mud and Loving, have each made my list of their year’s best movies. Those films, three fictional and one historical, tell the stories of redneck brothers betrayed by their father, a quasi-supernatural psychiatric decompensation, a backwoods coming of age and interracial love in the Jim Crow South. What all of them have in common with The Bikeriders are the authentic, compelling characters.

After all, what mostly happens in The Bikeriders is drinking, fighting and riding motorcycles – and the plot traces the natural consequences. Motorcycle riding is a relatively dangerous activity, as are binge drinking and fighting, so you won’t surprised that not everyone comes out unscathed

Tom Hardy and Austin Butler in THE BIKERIDERS. Courtesy of Focus Features.

As Johnny, Tom Hardy is an amalgam of world weariness and alpha power. Hardy is known for his physicality, but his Johnny looks like more of an average guy than his characters often do; he doesn’t look scary at first glance, but no one wants to mess with him. Hardy is able to project internal steeliness.

The Wife noted that Austin Butler just looks like movie star. Indeed, when a barroom crowd parts so that Kathy can first glimpse Butler’s Benny at the end of a pool table in all his hunkiness, the scene evokes when John Garfield first sees Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice, or when Burt Lancaster first sees Claudia Cardinale in The Leopard. Benny is so devoid of emotion for most of the movie, the key to Butler’s performance is making us wonder whether there’s any empathy buried deep down in there someplace. Is Benny a one-dimensional sociopath or somebody able to repress his feelings?

Jodie Comer in THE BIKERIDERS. Courtesy of Focus Features.

The Bikeriders is a showcase for Jody Comer, whom I had most recently seen playing a medieval French noblewoman in The Last Duel, as the biker girlfriend brimming with ambivalence. The Bikeriders works because of Comer’s matter of fact and perceptive narration; Kathy is the only surviving character who is observant and articulate enough to tell the story. Comer’s performance definitely merits an Oscar nomination.

As Kathy, Comer, who grew up in and lives in Liverpool, sounds like a lifetime Chicagoan; it’s the best American regional accent in the movies since Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson in Fargo.

Nichols essentially discovered and launched the career of Michael Shannon in Shotgun Stories; Shannon has acted in all of Nichol’s films except Loving. Shannon is again wonderful here in a small, juicy role. Emory Cohen and Norman Reedus sparkle as gang members Cockroach and Funny Sonny, respectively.

Nichol’s character-driven slice of biker life is a grand movie, and Jodie Comer elevates it even more.

THE LAST DUEL: power, gender, superstition and knights in armor

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Photo caption: Adam Driver and Matt Damon in THE LAST DUEL. Courtesy 20th Century Studios.

Based on accounts of the last medieval trial by combat, The Last Duel is both a thriller and a thinker. Director Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, The Martian) brings alive medieval superstition and savagery, and embeds an exploration of the power dynamics within feudal society, especially for women.

The setting is France in the 1380s. Jean (Matt Damon) and Jacques (Adam Driver) have been born into the nobility as squires, which means that they serve as mounted, armored warriors and can own land and castles supported by their very own peasants. Jean is later promoted to the higher title of knight. That puts Jean and Jacques in the elite one percent, but they are totally subservient to the region’s count, Pierre (Ben Affleck), who in turn owes the same absolute fealty to King Charles VI (check him out on Wikipedia).

Jean is an impressive fighter, but not very strategic. He’s a dunderhead, devoid of any social or political skill. Jean has married the beautiful and intelligent aristocrat Marguerite (Jodie Comer), whose father had fallen out of royal favor. Try as she might, Marguerite is only moderately successful in helping Jean from bulling his way through life’s china shop.

Jacques is a canny smoothy, with a rare business sense and charm that melts the ladies. Those financial smarts, along with his appreciation for culture, makes Jacques a protege of Pierre, the count. Pierre favors favors Jacques over Jean, who resents it.

Finding Marguerite alone at home, Jacques rapes her. When Marguerite accuses him, Jacques denies it. Jean presses the case, which culminates in the film’s titular trial by combat.

Ridley Scott tells the story first from Jean’s point of view, then from Jacques’ and, finally, from Margeurite’s. Unlike in Rashomon, the three versions of what occurred don’t diverge much from each other. Instead, we see how Jean and Jacques, who both adhere to the code of their class, see themselves. Jean really thinks that he is a good husband. Jacques, although he has forced himself on Marguerite without her consent, really doesn’t think he has committed rape. (They have their Code of Chivalry, but it sure isn’t very chivalrous.)

Jodie Comer in THE LAST DUEL. Courtesy 20th Century Studios.

We learn that, in 1300s European legality, rape wasn’t even a violent crime against the woman, but was a property crime against her guardian; (she was essentially the property of her father or husband). Ridley Scott slyly emphasizes this when he shows Jean’s reaction to an equine assault on his favorite breeding mare.

Margeurite’s insistence on bringing the rape charge publicly is a major problem for both Jean and for Jacques. It’s also an annoying inconvenience for the count, the king and the Church, who would sweep it under the rug. Jean thinks that he cleverly found away around the cover-up, but he overlooks one disturbing factor – if he dies in the duel, Marguerite will be immediately burned at the stake.

The performances by Comer, Driver, Damon and Affleck are all excellent. Harriet Walker is very good as Jean’s mother, a role which seems at first like a stereotypical stereotypical shrewish mother-in-law, until we learn of her own complicated journey navigating a world where men are unaccountable.

Scott shows us some savage medieval battles to prepare us for the final duel. Warfare at the time was desperate and brutal hand-to-hand butchery, within a sword’s length, like fighting in a phone booth. To stab, slash or impale an opponent, a combatant needed to find an unarmored body part. The jousting in The Last Duel seems especially authentic.

The Wife didn’t want to accompany me when I described it as the “medieval rape movie”; I should have said it’s the “trial by combat movie”.

I was late to The Last Duel, catching up with it several months after its summer 2021 release. Due to the distributor’s blustery publicity campaign, I had underestimated it; it’s one of the Best Movies of 2021, The Last Duel is streaming from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, HBO and redbox.