A film that brings great photographs to life should be a great thing in itself, a way to connect us not just with a photographer’s art but also with their subjects. Direct inspiration for Jeff Nichols The cyclists is the 1968 book of the same name by New Journalism photographer Danny Lyon, who spent three years chronicling the lives of the members of a Chicago motorcycle club. Lyon’s photos—of tattooed, skinny, mischievous-looking guys in leather vests, of women whose hair seems perpetually tousled by the wind even though they’re not riding—are raw and immediate, but there’s a lilting tenderness to them, too. Lyon lived among these people, and photos of him are about as far from a clinical anthropological study as you can get; instead, he opened a portal into their lives and the things they loved most. What motivates them most is the idea of getting on the bike, without a helmet, and riding fast; women sometimes ride bikes too, but most of the time they seem to love being around these men. Lyon’s photographs, in pearly black and white, bring them to life, to the point that the images themselves seem to breathe.
So why does Nichols’ film feel so lifeless and listless? It features a cast of amazing and attractive actors, including Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy and Mike Faist. Shot for shot, it shows clear affection and respect for Lyon’s work, often echoing it with artisanal specificity. (The director of photography is Adam Stone, also the director of photography on other Nichols films, such as Take Shelter, Mud, Midnight Special, It is Loving.)
See more information: Original cyclist photos by Danny Lyon
But reverence can sap the life of a film – that and too much acting. And boy, is there a lot of acting in The cyclists. The film begins in a bar, where Butler’s Benny is sitting, minding his own business, until two thugs approach him. He’s wearing his club’s jacket – they’re called the Vandals – and these rioters are vehemently opposed. The three take the fight to the outside, and Benny, a lean, mean fighter, seems to be holding his own in this two-on-one fight, although we later find out that he doesn’t come off so easily.
Around that time, we also met the woman who fell in love with Benny at first sight, Comer’s Kathy. She tells her story with the passionate seriousness of a Shangri-La. (The girl group’s glorious anthem, “Out in the Streets,” is a prominent feature of the film’s soundtrack.) A lanky, serious-looking guy, Danny from Faist, captures it all on a tape recorder. Kathy describes the night she walked into a scary biker place; she doesn’t like the look of these guys and tells her friend that she wants to leave. “And that’s when I saw Benny, standing over the pool table,” she gushes, before continuing with the dem, dese and dose for almost two hours of The bikerIt’s a not-so-vrooming runtime.
We learn all about how the vandals came to be: Hardworking truck driver Johnny (Hardy) sees The wild on TV and becomes fascinated, as any normal human being would be, by Marlon Brando. Why can’t he start a club for the guys in town who like to ride bikes? Who like to speed down the highway with the wind in their greasy hair, who like to commune at the local bar, who really love to feel free? It’s all very innocent, until it isn’t. They are guys who also love to fight, whether to defend their territory or just for fun, and Johnny, although he is one of the oldest in the group, is one of the toughest. We see him beat up a guy who respectfully asks if he can start a chapter of the group in another city – only, in the end, to tell the guy that of course he can. This is pure biker logic, as presented by Nichols (who also wrote the screenplay), and it makes a certain amount of sense.
See more information: The 100 best films of the last 10 decades
Until new guys arrive and ruin everything. Isn’t it always like this? Nichols is careful to give each of these bikers their moment in the sun, just as Lyon did with his photographs. We learn that the gruff man of few words Zipco (played by Nichols regular Michael Shannon) really wanted to go to Vietnam, although he was turned down for reasons that don’t really need explanation – you can tell. all in the crazy gleam of his eyes. We see, and Kathy claims, that Johnny envies Benny; he’s also at least a little in love with him, but how could he not be? As Butler plays him, he’s a laid-back god at work in men’s jeans, even though we never see any of these guys at work. He walks and rides through the world as if it were his for the conquest; He doesn’t say much, but his penetrating gaze says a lot. No wonder Kathy is crazy about him, as she says over and over again.
But there are problems in this paradise, and one of the problems with the film is that, although we are told how much Kathy adores Benny, there are very few scenes of them together. In one, they snuggle in bed while Benny recovers from surgery that was supposed to repair his broken foot. (That injury is the work of the goons we met in the first scene.) They’re laughing at an episode of Bewitched, both slaves to the patently wonderful ridiculousness of mid-1960s television. Then Johnny intrudes; he needs to get Benny walking again, injured foot be damned. And so on. The trials and problems pile up and before you know it, it’s the end of an era.
Yet we feel like we are being moved through this world as if we are experiencing the Hall of Presidents, rather than stepping directly into the lives of a group of wild but deeply human young men and women. Perhaps the problem is beyond Nichols’ control. The faces we see in Lyon’s photographs are so self-contained that inventing a story around them seems almost sacrilegious. All visual right: Comer’s hair has the right bouffant style; she is dressed in exactly the same synthetic crepe turtlenecks we see in the Lyon photos. And you can’t drink in Butler’s carefree, unstudied sex appeal and not fall in love with Benny, at least a little.
But Brando’s ghost haunts cyclists, and not in a good way. We can see how assiduously each of these actors studied and prepared; It’s as if the principles of method acting – at least method acting as it is commonly misunderstood – are oozing, like sweat, through your pores. This is the antithesis of the lived-in vitality we see in Lyon’s photos. (Another problem is that the charismatic Mike Faist only gets a few minutes of screentime, spread throughout the film.)
Nichols is an intelligent and sensitive filmmaker. His 2016 film Loving is excellent: Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton play Richard and Mildred Loving, whose struggle to live as a married couple spurred the 1967 Supreme Court decision that struck down laws banning interracial marriage. This film was also inspired by great historical photographs, specifically the Life magazine photos taken by Gray Villet, played by Shannon in the film. These photos captured the Lovings’ everyday affection: the goal was not to make them look exceptional, but to show how average they were. With cyclists, Nichols tries once again to open a door into the lives of the people who lived before us. The romance of the streets – of being on them, in a fast vehicle, and of having your girlfriend hug you after you’ve safely got off your bike – is present in Lyon’s photos. They are complete in themselves. The cyclists adds color and movement and a developed backstory. And yet, somehow, it feels like a subtraction.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
