TIFF 2021: Jockey
tiff 2021The story of an aging veteran hanging onto his last few good years is nothing new for the cinematic art form. This has been a defining narrative for decades, with nearly every sport and walk of life being represented in some way. Coming from a deeply personal root, Clint Bentley's feature directorial debut Jockey introduces itself as the newest entree into this group. Screening as part of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, Jockey follows an aging jockey named Jackson (Clifton Collins Jr.) who is dealing with a variety of health and social issues as he nears retirement. His life, however, finds more turbulence as a young man named Gabriel (Moisés Arias) introduces himself to Jackson and reveals himself to be his unknown son.
With stories such as this, the film ultimately lives or dies on the strength of its lead. No matter how strong the writing or direction of a project is, the lead is the heart and soul of the project with these types of stories, as they ultimately are the foundation of why the audience cares at all about the drama within the film. This pressure normally leads to insanely good or insanely bad performances in these roles – with nearly no in between. Luckily for Jockey, Clifton Collins Jr. is nothing short of phenomenal. While the actor has impressed in more supporting-oriented roles in the past, Jockey gives his character plenty of emotional weight to chew on and use with Collins giving the best performance of his career so far. He is personable, flawed, honest, and captivating with a controlled grittiness giving his character the depth it needs from a performance standpoint. It also is great to once again see Moisés Arias back on the big screen in a more dramatic role, which continues to prove his worth past just that of comedy. While Jockey might not be quite a revelation to his career as something like Monos, it is still rather strong and his chemistry with Collins feels undeniable.
The technical craft of the film is the other obvious highlight with the feature, being nothing less than gorgeous. The cinematography from Adolpho Veloso is a nearly perfect mix of intimate and distanced, with both close shots of emotion and wide shots showing beautiful sunsets and displays of raw nature adding an artistic beauty to the project in a similar vein as something like Nomadland. The film altogether, because of both this technical craft and these performances, carries a raw sense of humanity and emotion. It feels focused and understanding of its world and emotions, giving the project time to breathe while maintaining a rather clean 99-minute runtime.
Sadly, there is an undeniable force working against the film: the genre it belongs to. The story of Jockey is captivating within a vacuum of its own existence, but when the added context of what the genre has produced in the last couple of decades alone, it quickly starts to feel a bit too standard and paint-by-numbers for its own good. For those who have seen projects such as The Wrestler, Bull and The Rider, just to name a few, the emotions of Jockey will automatically lose quite a bit of their impact simply because they have already been realised in the near past to great effect. It also doesn't help that the foundation of the relationship between Jackson and his son is a bit shaky, from a narrative perspective, causing their connection to feel a bit confusing as the film goes on.
Jockey is a film that is hard to fully judge. While the emotion and story feel rather generic by this point, the film is clearly coming from an authentic and important place from director Clint Bentley, which has to be recognised. The performances are fantastic and the visuals are clearly stunning, but there is sadly something holding the film back from truly feeling like anything above "good".
