In his latest missive our movie correspondent relishes an engrossing drama that reveals the gritty side of life on the racetrack
Jockey (2021)
directed by Clint Bentley; starring Clifton Collins Jr., Molly Parker, Moises Arias
This diehard fan of horse racing flicks fell hopelessly in love with Jockey the moment Molly Parker came walking down her shedrow carrying a bucket and bummed a smoke off Clifton Collins, Jr., the rider who had arrived to gallop her horse.
That was about two and a half minutes into the hour and a half of this very independent movie, and from then on it came across as a racing tale spilled straight from the guts of people who cared very much about getting things right.
Parker is Ruth Wilkes, Collins is Jackson Silva, and Jockey is firmly rooted in a friendship that outshines more mundane concerns, like winning races or making weight. These are racetrackers on the far margins – by comparison, the Cajuns of Casey’s Shadow are living in clover – down and out in Phoenix and beyond, toiling at jobs no one in their right mind should want.
But that’s the life they have chosen. For most of the people involved, racing is one long, unrequited love affair with a sport that always has been cruelly divided between the haves and have-nots. Jockey is horse racing on the down low, shot for relative peanuts at Turf Paradise in 2020 with full access to every corner of a racetrack that clearly has seen better days.
In writing the movie script with Greg Kwedar, director Clint Bentley drew on stories of his father, Robert Glenn Bentley, a jockey who did most of his winning on Quarter Horses. Jackson Silva is marginally more successful, but the trials and tribulations are universal, and the filmmakers grab some delicious details, like Jackson flipping off the jocks’ room scale at the verdict of an unsympathetic number, or the jockey’s description of Ruth’s promising filly as “a swan with teeth”.
Before the filly’s first race, Ruth confesses to being nervous, like the “first day of school”.
Jackson’s reply? “She’s about to skip two grades.”
Dancing at a backstretch barbecue, their giggling twirl in the firelight moves to Jackson’s trailer, where a former intimacy is suggested but really doesn’t matter, since true friends always go forward and never dwell.
It is hard to imagine any better, more truthful scene in a racing movie than what then follows: the claustrophobic moment of Jackson’s seizure and Ruth’s gentle cradling of her friend.
His collapse and loss of feeling in one arm traces to spinal damage revealed in an earlier visit to – what else? – a horse doctor. Jackson is told he’s got about one fall left, then curtains.
“I’ve never been scared before, Ruth. There it is.”
The civilian watching Jockey from outside the sport might wonder aloud, “So quit already. What are you waiting for?”
Racetrackers know, though, exactly what Jackson is waiting for. One more chance at the brass ring. That one last horse to light up his world and make it all worthwhile. And for Jackson, Ruth’s filly is “like a horse I never thought I’d get to ride”.
There is just enough plot to Jockey that takes it beyond merely a beautifully photographed character study. Mainly there is Gabriel (Moises Arias, right), an apprentice who comes into Jackson’s life convinced the older man is his father.
Jackson’s knee-jerk rejection of the idea gives way to the longshot possibility it might be true. DNA aside, they end up connecting as mentor and student, intent more on sharing the challenges of their profession than family grievances.
In one of many scenes shot at the beguiling golden hour, as they recline by a pond in the infield of the track, Jackson plops a duffel bag beside Gabriel containing an assortment of riding apparel. The kid tries to protest, without success.
“It’s a gift,” says Jackson. “I’d be offended if you didn’t take it. But don’t start losing. There's nothing worse than losing a race in new gear. It’s like you’re trying to buy the part or something.”
The story takes a left-hand turn to San Diego, where Jackson reaches out to Gabriel’s mother in an attempt to confirm his paternity. That does not go well, and the viewer wonders why he bothered.
All is forgiven, though, on Jackson’s drive home when he stops to spend a quiet moment at sunset on the rocky banks of a gentle river. A herd of mares appears, crossing the stream in the company of a gray stallion. Jackson and the stallion consider each other at a distance, embraced by Alfonso Veloso’s seductive images, leaving the viewer to savor or interpret at their own discretion.
“That was one of those happy accidents,” said director Bentley (pictured right). “The horses showed up, Alfonso reacted quickly, and Clifton took it from there.”
It was that kind of experience. Bentley said the last part of the movie was halfway written on the fly.
“We were doing a movie on this little track that’s become something way beyond what we expected,” Bentley said. “It’s been a springboard to other things, and it’s interesting the number of people who come out of the woodwork who really like it.”
Jockey was well-received at prestige gatherings, winning the Audience Award at the AFI Film Fest and earning a nomination for Veloso for the Spotlight Award by the American Society of Cinematographers. The movie was also a nominee for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, where Collins was honored with a Special Jury acting award.
Mainstream reviews were strong, suggesting that there might be an audience out there for racing movies that depart from the traditional fare.
“This is a drama that prizes journalistic or documentary values,” wrote Matt Zoller-Seitz for the Roger Ebert movie site, “as well as the ‘epic naturalism’ of films by directors like Terrence Malick and Chloe Zhao in which the camera might be as interested in flowing water, a sunset, a flock of birds, or a line of silhouetted horses as in whatever the characters are doing or saying.”
Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post couldn’t get enough of Collins. “With his melancholy, careworn face and battered physicality, Collins lends Jackson a guarded soulfulness that makes his character simultaneously inscrutable and transparent,” she wrote. “Jockey gives him just the canvas he has long deserved to prove the kind of mutable, restrained performance of which he’s capable.”
After Jockey, Kwedar and Bentley teamed again for Sing Sing, due for release this spring, about full-fledged dramatic productions staged by the inmates of the infamous correctional facility in Ossining, New York.
Academy Award nominees Colman Domingo (Rustin) and Paul Raci (Sound of Metal) star, along with non-professionals hired on site. “We learned how effective that could be with Jockey,” Bentley said. “The actors we recruited from the racetrack world gave the movie a feel I don’t think we would have gotten otherwise.”
Bentley and Kwedar worked with Collins on their first feature film, the border drama Transpecos. Molly Parker is known best but not exclusively for Deadwood, and Collins has been in more pictures than you can count. Viewers are likely to remember him best from 187 (1997), from his sly turn as one of the killers in Capote (2005), and more recently from Nightmare Alley, which was released in late 2021.
Fans of Hannah Montana (I know you’re out there) will recognize Moises Arias as mischievous Rico on the long-running Disney show starring Miley Cyrus. Arias has been steadily working since, in movies as diverse as Ender’s Game, Pitch Perfect 3, and The Stanford Prison Experiment, but Jockey supplied his first role with real meat on the bones.
The end of Jockey is happy, sort of, signing off with a lingering take on Jackson that is reminiscent of George Clooney in Michael Clayton shuffling through a gamut of emotions.
Jockey was breathtaking on the big screen but also plays well at home, where it can be accessed for a small rental fee.
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