Before being the celebrated writer of four Martin Scorsese films and director of such classics as American gigolo, cat people, and torment, Paul Schrader was a young critic and film theorist (like many budding filmmakers). At the age of 24, he wrote a short, beautiful tome entitled Transcendental style in filma meditation on filmmakers whose work embodies, as Schrader writes“[an] ability to transcend culture and personality […] a spiritual truth that can be achieved by objectively juxtaposing objects and images that cannot be obtained through a subjective personal or cultural approach to those objects.”
More than half a century after writing this text, Schrader’s new film Master Gardener completes a sort of trilogy that could be called a return to form (in the most literal sense of formalism). The film follows Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton), a stern but thoughtful man charged with tending the grounds of Norma Haverhill, a wealthy elderly woman who holds an annual charity gala in her sprawling gardens. Out of childish obligation, Norma brings in her orphaned niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell) to work in the garden and train under Narvel, when personalities clash and secrets are revealed.
Master GardenerThe fantastic first hour stumbles along a slippery slope of a conclusion, through illogical moments, strange tone shifts and awkward direction. Schrader’s work on film theory shows quite clearly what he was trying to do with the defining moments towards the end of the film. Master Gardenerbut the truly brilliant seeds he plants throughout the film don’t grow into anything ultimately satisfying.
Master Gardener Completes Schrader’s ‘Man in a Room’ Trilogy
KOJO / A24
After the incredible movie with a religious theme first reformed and the hypnotic but messy follow-up The card counterSchraders Master Gardener is yet another film about a tormented man who uses repetitive rituals to discipline his mind, and the person he encounters who can lead him to salvation. Each film dissects the ego of a male loner, Schrader’s favorite character.
This informal trilogy relies heavily on the “man in a room” method of Schrader’s style, with protagonists narrating voiceover while writing down the same words in their diaries (something he borrowed from Robert Bresson). Each film also leads, as irrevocably doomed, to the threat of deadly violence. That threat worked really well in the previous two movies, but is probably the cause of Master Gardener ultimate failure to stick the landing.
The film follows the daily routines of Narvel, a man who, despite overalls and boots smeared with dirt, has an immaculate composition. Played with simmering intensity by Edgerton, Narvel rarely has a hair out of place on top of his slicked back head, and almost never says the wrong word. He is thoughtful of every movement and expression, a master of the art of discipline. However, the root of discipline is ‘disciple’, so the term always implies discipleship – of whom or what is Narvel a disciple?
Narvel seems like a follower of nature and Norma (a masterful, sour, surprisingly funny Sigourney Weaver with her best performance in years), two dominant forces in his life to which he surrenders. Norma seems to have rescued him from a dark past, and Narvel is as devoted to her as he is to the plant life he writes so eloquently. There is a kind of zen in his life, an idyllic calm that belies his own roots – when he undresses it is really shocking to see the iconography of Nazis and white supremacists all over his body adorned with inky dark tattoos.
A classic Paul Schrader movie, for one hour
Schrader explores his world with grace and subtlety, adhering to the ‘form over content’ principles he worships in transcendental cinema. The stark formalism and minimalist acting, cinematography and beautiful score of Dev Hynes (aka Blood Orange) complement Narvel’s disposition in a way that exposition just can’t, and Schrader knows this better than most filmmakers. A student of Ozu, Dreyer, Bresson and (to some extent) Tarkovsky, Schrader is fully aware of how to get rid of the excess to evoke something transcendental; he does what his idol is Bresson once wrote“eliminate anything that might distract from the inner drama.”
Schrader is excellent at this, and even when he brings outward drama to Maya’s character, he maintains almost the same amount of discipline Narvel exercised in capturing the emotional complications. Norma clashes with Maya, who the tough old matriarch says is “mixed blood” and a drug user who’s had a hard life. Maya’s presence disrupts the zen of these gardens, exposing secrets and problems buried in mounds of repressive filth.
The way Narvel deals with desire (at least in forms beyond his gardening and Norma) is fascinating to watch – this is a character covered in Nazi regalia tattoos, dedicated to an embittered old woman, who now falls for a younger person of colour. Like the paranormal shell Narvel lives in, he can’t even take his shirt off around someone he shares a mutual attraction with. Edgerton and Swindell work wonders with this narrative disruption, showing a complicated desire with the required restraint of Schrader’s style. if Master Gardener stayed in this lane alone, it would be one of the most interesting movies of the year. Unfortunately, it deviates from the lush floral path of his spiritual and psychological portrait, and straight into deserts of stupidity.
Master Gardener ends in a Slapdash Rush
Master Gardener introduces a conflict important to Narvel’s character, but handled poorly and without logic. Incidents ensue that force Narvel to face his past and fight for a chance at redemption, but they are brought about with genre elements that seem totally foreign to the mesmerizing style that Schrader had developed.
A vigilante-style plot, a white savior story, a bizarrely incongruous fantasy scene, the worst sex scene of the year, and a surprisingly flat and emotionless conclusion that trampled on the beautiful beginnings Schrader had planted. Even Sigourney Weaver’s incredible performance is taken by surprise and reaches an impasse of absurdity and stupidity. She’s still extremely cute in a bad way, but her actions at the end of the movie make so little sense it’s embarrassing to watch.
Could be Master Gardener was just rushed – shooting didn’t start until February and was shown in Venice as early as September. In addition, Schrader wrote a completely different film with the recently released There are no saints, and was probably working on elements of it. This would explain the strange feeling that things are just missing from the movie.
Of course it is a hallmark of the transcendental style to be mysterious and not to strive for total realism, but even at the basic cinematic level there seems to be no continuity in the last act, and there are literally multiple problems with the ADR (Extra Dialogue Replacement), where dubbing is just completely off. Perhaps in the end Schrader should have been a little more like his protagonist, with patience and longevity for his garden.
Schrader’s transcendental style stumbles
Clearly, like his transcendentalist ancestors (and his previous two films), Schrader sought to develop a hypnotic, mysterious and repetitive mise-en-scene that would eventually be broken by decisive moments, an emotionally and spiritually shocking sequence for the characters and audience alike. Schrader wrote beautifully about this in Transcendental style in filmformalizing the process as a series of withholds that activate attention, finally followed by decisive action from which the emotionality would explode for the first time, with Schrader asking, “What are you going to do with it, now that he’s fully conditioned you not to expect?”
Perverse, it’s the retention mechanisms that work so well in Master Gardener and the action that doesn’t work at all; the exposition and narrative developments of the end betray the careful construction and stylization. As Schrader wrote 50 years ago in his book:
Transcendental style tries to maximize the mystery of existence; it eschews all conventional interpretations of reality: realism, naturalism, psychologism, romanticism, expressionism, impressionism […] “If everything is explained by intelligible causal necessities,” wrote Abbot Amédée Ayfre, “or by objective determinism, even if their exact nature remains unknown, then nothing is sacred.”
The transcendental style of the Master Gardener‘s the enchanting first hour works wonderfully towards this, but ultimately yields nothing. It explains and tries to do too much, and in the process of shunning “all conventional interpretations of reality”, it also eschews common sense and artistry. From KOJO Studios, Master Gardener premiered at the Venice Film Festival, followed by its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival.