A Review

My Weekend Viewing:

While I might not have been absolutely in love with his last film "The Card Counter," Paul Schrader's latest deep, dark psychological drama "Master Gardener" is a spectacular rebound. Joel Edgerton plays a seemingly ordinary head gardener on a historic estate who is asked by the grounds' owner (Sigourney Weaver, who gives one of the year's best supporting performances) to take her troubled grand-niece on as an apprentice.

This somber, poetic, and revealing character study plays like a mix tape of Schrader's greatest hits; a nuanced story about wounded or isolated people seeking redemption and retribution, with elements of a crime thriller sprinkled in. We are slowly but inevitably shown the secret personal histories each of these characters hold, from the thorny relationship between the gardener's new protege and her great-aunt that is marred by the girl's history of drug abuse to the gardener himself who, in spite of his soft-spoken demeanor, hides a disturbing, violent past.

"Master Gardener" left me stunned but also moved, and shocked but also strangely warmed. There are times it can prove frustrating as the plot is rather vague and the pacing almost nonexistent. But it's by disregarding those narrative conventions that Paul Schrader directs your focus where it should be. Squarely at the characters and how they tick. Its final moments reminded me very much of one of my absolute favorite of his movies "American Gigolo" for how it portrays lonely peoples' eventual discovery of their need for others. The horticultural setting is all too fitting because the people at this film's center, not unlike flowers, are tightly closed beings who if shown a little attention and tenderness open up to reveal their true colors and selves.