Songs My Broth­ers Taught Me

Chloé Zhao’s first fea­ture was shot at the Pine Ridge Indi­an Reser­va­tion in South Dako­ta, giv­ing debut screen cred­its to a group of Lako­ta Sioux actors to tell the sto­ry a broth­er and his younger sis­ter; John (John Red­dy) and Jashaun Win­ters (Jashaun St John). The sib­lings see their paths diverge as John makes plans to leave the reser­va­tion for Los Ange­les after grad­u­a­tion, while Jashaun, just shy of 12 but wise beyond her years, ques­tions her own future as well.

Peo­ple fil­ter in and out of John and Jashaun’s lives – girl­friends, half-sib­lings, fel­low res­i­dents and rival boot­leg­gers – but Zhao most­ly keeps our atten­tion on the Win­ters sib­lings. As in her heart­break­ing 2017 film The Rid­er and 2020’s Nomad­land, her cam­era waits for the peo­ple she’s fram­ing to exhale, the world remain­ing silent while they decide their next move. Emp­ty spaces are ripe for lyri­cal con­tem­pla­tion and, well, just a bit of peace.

Zhao’s com­mit­ment to work­ing with non-pro­fes­sion­al actors gives her films a rare authen­tic­i­ty, but John Reddy’s per­for­mance is less mem­o­rable than that of Brady Jan­dreau in The Rid­er or Char­lene Swankie in Nomad­land. As a result Songs My Broth­ers Taught Me is less com­pelling than Zhao’s sub­se­quent fea­tures. This is part­ly down to the sto­ry; a teenager’s desire to cross coun­try with his girl­friend is less impact­ful than a cow­boy com­ing to terms with a crush­ing injury, or a nomadic woman choos­ing how and where to spend the final days of her life.

As Jashaun, it’s St John who car­ries Songs – her intro­spec­tive turn is the film’s beat­ing heart. It helps that the land­scapes she wan­ders through are invari­ably gor­geous (this is Zhao’s most con­vinc­ing valen­tine to Ter­rence Mal­ick if ever there was one). Cru­cial­ly, the film resists exces­sive, brood­ing voiceovers and gra­tu­itous cut­aways, fram­ing nature at its most arrest­ing as it shapes the lives of John and Jashaun.

While scant on plot and some­what unfo­cused tonal­ly, Zhao nev­er­the­less man­ages to con­struct a vivid por­trait of a com­mu­ni­ty on the fringes with­out frills or fuss. Death and dis­ap­point­ment are just part of the every­day in this land; the rev­e­la­tion of a rodeo cow­boy father who had 25 oth­er chil­dren doesn’t make John or Jashaun crum­ble. Instead, such news imbues the film with a sense of mys­tery, and strength in the face of precarity.

That’s the thing about Chloé Zhao: she always finds a way to leave the door ajar into a new com­mu­ni­ty with sur­pris­ing, often beguil­ing peo­ple and places to wel­come you in. There’s no catch, no twist. All she asks is that you tread carefully.

Songs My Broth­ers Taught Me is avail­able to watch on MUBI from 9 April .