Authenticity is a feeling and investigative fervor is an attitude. The Italian neorealist classics bear the marks of the journalistic research on which they rely, but journalists rarely feature in the action. The whole truth of even an instant is vast, and this is why, to get anywhere near it, fiction is created. In Jeff Nichols’s latest film, “The Bikeriders,” reportage is built into the story. It’s based on the photographer Danny Lyon’s 1968 book of the same title, which comprises pictures he took and interviews he conducted during four years that he spent with a Chicago motorcycle club, and, in the film, the character of Danny (Mike Faist) and his activities as a photographer and interviewer are a constant presence. This device lends “The Bikeriders” a tangy sense of contact with real life, but fidelity to facts ultimately proves limiting, and the movie as a whole feels underrealized.
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