With Master Gardener, it’s clear that Paul Schrader’s last three films have used personal portrayals of tormented men to represent three different American sins. First Reformed was not only a crisis of faith for its morose pastor (Ethan Hawke), but also a reckoning over the environmental degradation caused by a voracious nation. In The Card Counter, Oscar Isaac’s veteran-turned-ascetic-gambler literally embodied American military abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Master Gardener takes on the United States’ original sin—white supremacy—with the tale of a reformed racist (Joel Edgerton), now a reclusive gardener in witness protection, who falls for a younger, biracial apprentice (Quintessa Swindell). It’s as awkward as it sounds. A charitable reading of Master Gardener would be to say that it feels unfinished and unformed—that there might be something here with another pass at the script or a different cast. (Edgerton particularly seems unsure of how to play one of Schrader’s lonely powder kegs.) There isn’t a believable moment between Edgerton and Swindell, whose dialogue is almost always aimed at the audience rather than each other. Envisioned and employed as heavy symbols—especially during an icky, body-baring sex scene, in which her naked love conquers his tattooed hate—these characters fail to register as people. (Sigourney Weaver also appears as the garden estate’s horny benefactress and it’s as if she dropped in from some campy hothouse melodrama.) Still, Devonte Hynes’ synth-inflected score adds atmosphere and nicely nods to Schrader’s early-career films, while a climactic burst of expressionism offers relief from the staid compositions that otherwise define the film. It’s Schrader’s latest use of the “transcendental style” he wrote about in his 1972 book and masterfully employed in First Reformed. Unfortunately, since then, his guilt trilogy has delivered fewer and fewer dividends.
(5/14/2023)
