This review contains spoilers for the film Master Gardener.
By Harry Gay
Paul Schrader concludes his three-movie exegesis on the American soul with Master Gardener, a complicated film that proves more wild and unwieldy than pruned to perfection. Compared to his previous two entries, First Reformed and Card Counter, this film left me slightly underwhelmed, and despite great performances and a wonderful heart, had me reaching for my insecticide over my watering can.
I am ashamed to say I am only a recent Scrhader convert. Having grown up like most cinephiles, I was exposed to Schrader’s work through his written collaborations with Martin Scorsese in the likes of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Paul Schrader only became a name I would remember during, like most people of my generation, his Bressonian renaissance in 2016 with First Reformed. There, after decades of milling around with low rated action flicks, he leaned heavily on what he was known for: isolated, weird men writing diary entries in empty rooms. He followed this up with Card Counter, both films featuring stoic men with the weight of the world on their shoulders, confronting institutional rot and their roles therein.
I loved First Reformed, and I can still remember my experience sitting down to watch Card Counter for the first time at the Sydney Film Festival. There I was, front row, middle seat, the massive screen filling my entire field of vision. An introduction by Paul Schrader opened the film, thanking audiences for coming along, and slyly hinting between belaboured breathes at the horrors that was to await, eliciting chuckles from knowing audience members used to his brand of violence and catharsis. The image then dissolved, and faded from black to an extreme close-up of a green blackjack table, the soundtrack occupied by the discordant scratches of heavy breathing. I almost thought for a second it was Schrader himself taking over the audio, continuing his rough and troubled breathing into the film itself. It was a magical movie moment, being so intoxicated by the images I was seeing on screen. Schrader has that power, to reach through to the audience and completely envelop you into his worlds.
Beyond those, I had only seen one other Schrader flick, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. Again, Schrader seems interested in weird dudes, (perhaps Schrader is a weird dude himself if his Facebook posts and online card games are anything to go by) but treats their stories with such intense sincerity you can’t help go along for the ride, even if they commit acts which can be problematic to say the least.
With Master Gardener, Schrader delivers us his weirdest and most confronting character yet. Enter Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton) a reformed Neo-Nazi turned horticulturalist and gardener, working on the estate of Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver). There, Narval lives a quiet life journalling and gallivanting with Norma, while internally lamenting his past, which physically follows him via his myriad of swastikas, totenkopfs and SS bolts tattooed across his back. His life is upended when Norma’s grand niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell) is placed under Narval’s wing, so she too can turn her life around. As is expected, the once married Narval and the young Maya fall in love. But when Maya’s life becomes a target by men from her past, Narval must commit one final act of vengeance to keep those he cares about safe from harm.
Much like his previous films, Schrader is interested in tackling some heavy subject matter here. With First Reformed, it was climate change and the role that institutionalised religions play in its acceleration. In Card Counter, he dove head first into the atrocities committed by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib. Here, Schrader seems ill-content with tackling just one hot button issue, and so tries his hand at a lot of them to middling success.
The most obvious issue is race. Narval is a reformed Neo-Nazi, a fascist ideology hell bent on creating a singular ethnostate run by a white majority. There is frequent use of racial slurs during what brief flashbacks we get, during which he murders a black man. Haverhill Gardens is a done up old plantation property. Norma uses the phrase “mixed blood” to describe Maya before she is introduced.
Norma is quite intriguing as a character. Her dialogue and actions toward Maya are filled with micro-aggressions, clearly viewing her mixed race heritage as a blight on her pristine family image. Her reaction to seeing Norval’s tattoos is not one of disgust, but eerie fasciation. She is enticed and intrigued by the sight of this clear, outward aggression towards those who are different and marginalised because of it. For her, her intense fascination with his body screams of her inner want to be him, to be outwardly racist, if she did not have to cover it up with a liberal sheen of tolerance for tolerance-sake. She continually brings up how Narval was reformed under her, how she brought him in. This not only reinforces the power dynamic between the two of them due to their age gap, which will be discussed later, but also serves as a reminder that she felt similar hatred but has mastered the act of masking it. Despite him being more open and accepting of others now, she assures herself but also derides him, as if she is still better than him at the end of the day.
Maya’s reaction to Narval’s tattoos are very different. Obviously extremely unnerved by them, she is confused as to why he does not get them removed. For Narval, the tattoos are a reminder of the past, a lingering shadow that dwells on every decision he makes. They are reminders that if he takes the wrong turn, he may diverge down that same dark path earlier in his life. They are “seeds” waiting to be planted, as he describes in an early monologue in which these tattoos are first revealed.
Later on, in a scene mirroring his exchange with Norma, Narval is again asked to strip for Maya, to become vulnerable in front of her. In this sequence, they both open their bodies, and accept one another despite their past transgressions. Schrader is asking audiences to extend a loving hand to those seeking redemption for their past deeds.
While a beautiful message, to “leave the world saying I love you” as the closing song asserts, is a noble one, I just couldn’t jive with the romance. The film does very little to establish any chemistry between the leads, and while it’s no blight on Edgerton or Swindell who do a great job with the material given, their sudden romance felt forced. A lot of this has to do with the dialogue, which is very overwritten and axiomatic, but the age discrepancy between the characters left a bad taste in my mouth. In the film, Maya is established to be just a little over twenty years old, with Narval decades her senior. Narval’s daughter, relocated and estranged from her father, is suggested to be around 15 years old by the events of the film. What occurs then is a very unnerving relationship between a woman and a man old enough to be her father.
One could say Schrader is playing with varying power dynamic through age. Norma is older than Narval and has romanced him while also being his boss. Narval is similarly Maya’s manager. Maya is also trapped in an abusive relationship with the same drug pusher who abused her mother. It is a series of traumas and abuses of power echoing across generations. The film does not lean into the problematic implications of their relationship, handwaving away any accusations with a tongue-in-cheek reference to Nabakov’s Lolita. Their decision to marry is almost fairy tale in its logic. And how this gels with the ideas around race is befuddling, as they are not one to one.
In a way, it feels lazy. Schrader touches on a lot of grand ideas, but never goes too in depth with any one of them. This laziness permeates the whole film. The editing is quite atrocious compared to his previous flicks, and the sound design is quite boxy and strange (although that could be the speakers on my TV). Cinematography wise it feels quite amateur. And again, the dialogue was not great and felt very on the nose. Edgerton sounds like he’s sleepwalking through his half baked inner monologues that often cut short before you even realise he is finished.
But perhaps Schrader is playing against type in this entry. Three quarters of the way through, the narration stops after Narval suggests that his journal, which had helped him previously, is no longer something he needs to keep up with. Perhaps his overly written soliloquies and truncated sentences were subversions of the typical “God’s lonely man” that lead Schrader’s work. This is a man done with the journalling, done with the sadness, done with the trite similes comparing things to the firing of a bullet. In a year full of director’s looking back at their careers and legacies, Schrader seems to be moving on and closing the chapter on the likes of Travis Bickle, characters made so famous they have had dangerous impacts on the way incel and far right communities view themselves. But instead of condemning them, he finds hope in change. That things will always rejuvenate.
To sum up my feelings is to describe a Schrader film itself: it’s complicated. The film does not work as well on a technical level when compared to its predecessors. Schrader’s attempts at tackling societal issues feels half hearted and the romance falls flat. However, I could not help get swept up in his earnestness and genuine love for all things that has taken hold of him this late in life. Perhaps with a little adjustments, Master Gardener could have really blossomed.
Harry Gay