Paul Schrader’s Tender Late-Career Efforts Bloom Once Again with Master Gardener

He doesn’t look terribly unlike Ethan Hawke’s Rev. Ernst Toller from First Reformed, pacing calmly through the garden in his (mostly black-on-black) horticulture vestments, an exhibit-worthy collection of incredible outfits from costume designer Wendy Talley. Each layer of clothing is an unfolding petal revealing something about the character in the way only fashion choices can.

I’ll leave the loosely connected details swimming around in your head rather than reconstruct the plot, but it’s milder than it sounds. Master Gardener might be bred to be divisive and confrontational, but there’s a sweetness to it, an ethos in Schrader’s old age that comes through like a concerned empathy for a narrow cultural conscience with a healthy dose of self-doubt. It’s a small, quiet film with a tiny cast, one chief location and a vested interest in how to blossom into one’s own in healthy, mindful ways—whatever that might mean for someone.

Dev Hynes’ (of Blood Orange) atmospheric score is an emotional touchstone in an oft-confusing arena both narratively and thematically. It’s hard to imagine how one should receive any of this without some providence from the score. It’s an everyday story for Schrader, a stalwart in cinematic perversion, but it’s more careful than most of his others, and tastefully so. The clearest example is in the meticulously planted seeds of consent, phrased as explicitly as possible throughout the screenplay so as to leave no room for interpretation in certain areas.

In his 70s, Schrader’s built an impressive late-stage thematic trilogy in First Reformed, The Card Counter and now Master Gardener. They’re eerily similar, obviously made by the same man, but don’t feel repetitive. They’re overflowing with subtext. If anything, the subtext goes overboard into cartoonishness at times, stripping the depth found in the stiller moments. But that’s unapologetically Schrader, and it’s to taste. When you zoom out, he’s created three sharp, honest, intriguing iterations on themes he’s been exploring his whole career.

What might a tempered, isolated man writing alone at his desk in the near darkness of lamplight be thinking about? What does he do? What if he’s into flowers? Or cards? Or god? What was his past? What do people share across vocations? Through romances and sexual desires? How are their daily lives affected by institutions? Prison, collective history, the church? How do they understand power and their relation to it? What are we afraid to talk about and why? It’s not all brilliant or profound, and it’s certainly not all well-worded, but it’s always thoughtful.

Remarkably candid, Schrader said that the time he spent making Master Gardener was fraught with health issues, leaving him believing it would be his last film up until a very recent uptick in health. If it were his last, it’d be a fine one to go out on: Tender, tense, contemplative and somehow still in your face. But lucky for us, there’s more Schrader in the oven.

Director: Paul Schrader
Writer: Paul Schrader
Starring: Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, Quintessa Swindell
Release Date: October 1, 2022 (New York Film Festival)

Luke Hicks is a New York City film journalist and arts enthusiast by way of Austin, TX. He got his master’s studying film philosophy and ethics at Duke and thinks every occasion should include one of the following: whiskey, coffee, gin, tea, beer, or olives. Love or lambast him on Twitter @lou_kicks.