Carried by Joel Edgerton, “Master Gardener” brings a more luminous and optimistic end to the dark trilogy of “the man in his room” by Paul Schrader, after “First Reformed” and “The Card Counter”.
Highly prolific screenwriter and director Paul Schrader is back with a new movie, Master Gardener, in theaters. Presented out of competition at the Venice Film Festival and in a gala session at the Marrakech International Film Festival in 2022, the feature film will finally be released in theaters in France on August 5.
Master Gardener tells the story of Narvel, played by Joel Edgerton, a horticulturist devoted to the gardens of the very refined Mrs. Haverhill, played by Sigourney Weaver. Narvel’s delicate balance is disrupted when his employer forces him to take on his great-niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell, seen in Trinkets and Black Adam) as an apprentice and the dark secrets of his past resurface.
The end of a trilogy for Paul Schrader
At almost 77 years old, Paul Schrader has nothing left to prove in his art. This great collaborator of Martin Scorsese, who wrote the screenplays for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Open Tomb, perhaps signs with Master Gardener one of his last works, the screenwriter and director having had health concerns.
If we wish him not to be his last film, Master Gardener is all the same the last part of a trilogy, started in 2017 with On the way to redemption (First Reformed) with Ethan Hawke and continued with The Card Counter with Oscar Isaac.
Less dark than the two previous films, Master Gardener still confronts the specter of the lonely white man facing contemporary America, this time with a more optimistic and enlightened finality. And it is thanks to the female gaze that the character transferred from film to film by Paul Schrader is freed from a destructive obscurantism.
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Thanks to the involved performances of an impeccable cast, Master Gardener manages to distinguish himself despite his surgical slowness from the start. But feelings then take over to immerse us in a poetry that is as active as it is contemplative.
Paul Schrader did not originally imagine a trilogy, as he confided to us when he came to the Marrakech International Film Festival:
“I didn’t think of a trilogy until later. Ingmar Bergman made three films that are called a trilogy, but I don’t think he considered them a trilogy when he was making them. It’s only in retrospect that you say to yourself, ‘Ah, but these three films can be put together. They go together.’ When someone pointed this out to me, I thought that was not the case. I think that’s kinda the case though.”
So what could we name this trilogy? “The Man in His Room Trilogy” suggests Paul Schrader. It must be said that On the road to redemption, The Card Counter and Master Gardener have in common to follow “a solitary man living alone, writing a diary and wearing some kind of mask to hide his secrets”.
Each of the anti-heroes in Paul Schrader’s three films are tortured beings seeking the light at the end of the tunnel – a bereaved pastor plagued by church shenanigans, an addicted poker gambler trying to rescue a young soul from the clutches of of a destructive environment and a horticulturalist tormented by his supremacist past – and who face a final test before absolution.
“The first one, he most likely died at the end, albeit ecstatic. The second one, he’s in prison. And this one, I thought we should let him reap the rewards of redemption”, explains Paul Schrader. And this new light brought to this trilogy comes from a change of thought on the part of the screenwriter and director:
“When I was younger I kind of felt like I didn’t want to leave this world without saying ‘Fuck you’. And now I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to leave this world without saying ‘I’ like'”.
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And it is through the world of flowers, a place conducive to metaphors, that Paul Schrader decided to develop the character of Narvel, who came from the name of country singer Narvel Felts, from limbo to light but also to tell differences ideologies and love stories between totally different people.
“The two women in Narvel’s life are of different ages. One is old enough to be his grandmother, the other young enough to be his daughter. But I didn’t want the audience to focus on the difference age, so I changed Narvel’s background from being a former mobster in witness protection to an ex-supremacist in the end, to add a politically incorrect twist to the plot. “
With this complex character, Paul Schrader also defends his vision of cinema and the thoughts he brings to viewers about our world:
“There were critics who just said that a character like that was irredeemable. And I kind of understand that. Maybe in the real world, maybe it’s true that he’s very unlikely that a person like this has changed so much. But on the other hand, in these stories that we tell ourselves, it’s all assumptions anyway. What if it happened? And it gives the viewer something something to think about. I’m not saying it’s an absolutely true story, but that’s what cinema is for.”
Master Gardener is a film that greatly inspired and carried Paul Schrader, “a great resurgence”, as he points out to us, that he had already felt a little with the series adaptation of American Gigolo. But he says his trilogy won’t expand any further. What about an ultimate film then? Nothing is less sure.
“I fell ill while filming the movie. I never fully recovered. If you had asked me two months ago if I would ever direct again, I probably would have said no. I think I wouldn’t. I don’t have the same energy as before. But I’m better now, so maybe I have one more card to play.”
Interview by Mégane Choquet at the Marrakech International Film Festival on November 16, 2022.
The Master Gardener movie is currently in theaters.