If you’ve been feeling just a little too happy lately, we have just the cure for that unwelcome lightness in your step—a new film from professional misery guts Paul Schrader. Get ready to experience the full weight of man’s separation from God as Master Gardener hits cinemas from May 26.
We kid, of course: Paul Schrader is one of the most important voices in modern cinema and a genuine auteur. But he is also the man who gave us, as writer and/or director, Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation of Christ, Affliction, First Reformed, and an Exorcist sequel so depressing they gave it to Renny Harlin to spice up. So we know what we’re in for.
In Master Gardener, Joel Edgerton plays the titular horticulturalist, Narvel Roth, who tends to the gardens of the grand New Orleans mansion presided over by wealthy matriarch Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver). He’s another of Schrader’s lonely men, though he seems to be on a more even keel than, say, Travis Bickle. But dark secrets from the past start to bubble up when he’s asked to train Norma’s niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell) in the ways of greenkeeping. It turns out Narvel has a history of violence and has been in witness protection for some time…
Ending the loose thematic trilogy that began with First Reformed and continued with The Card Counter, Schrader’s Master Gardener is, like so many other works in his canon, a meditation on guilt, faith, redemption, and humanity’s capacity for violence.
Which means, of course, that it’s a tough watch and most assuredly not for anyone. But if you’re on Schrader’s wavelength—or can tune it in for a limited time—what you’ll find here is an unflinching and deeply affecting drama from one of the most uncompromising directors of the last 50 years. Surely that’s worth a ticket?
