Facts: Paul Schrader.
Age: 76.
Lives: New York.
Family: wife Mary Beth Hurt.
Profession: director, screenwriter.
Previous films: scripts for, among others, “Taxi Driver”, “The Bull from the Bronx”, “Mosquito Coast”, “The Last Temptation of Christ”; director and script for, among others, “American gigolo”, “Cat people”, “Mishima”, “Dominion”, “First reformed”, “The card counter”.
Current: “The master gardener”.
— Of all the films I’ve made, I think I’m most proud of “Mishima”. Because when I made it, I couldn’t believe I had made it, he says when he and his actors meet the press.
Paul Schrader is one of the directors who emerged in the 1970s and who were called “the movie brats”. It also included Steven Spielberg, Francis Coppola, Brian de Palma, George Lucas and John Milius. Also added was Martin Scorsese, his big breakthrough film “Taxi Driver” had been written by Paul Schrader.
Violent past
During the 2000s, Schrader has with varying degrees of success and occasionally at long intervals directed films such as “Dominion” (with Stellan Skarsgård), the acclaimed “First reformed” and last year’s “The card counter”.
In “The master gardener” we meet Joel Edgerton as a skilled gardener with a dark and violent past. He meets a young woman on the run, and in many ways the film can be seen as the final part in a trilogy consisting of “Taxi driver”, “First reformed” and now “The master gardener”.
“That Time Is Gone”
— When I first met this man with no real qualities, it became “Taxi driver”. I have returned to him. Now it’s the third film, he’s older, he’s evolved.
Paul Schrader has also done that. Many of his films, not least the masterpiece “Taxi driver”, have ended very violently. Yes, there is violence in the new film as well, but not at all in the same way. Has Schrader softened? He says:
— I am moving away from violence. That time is over. Here is a man seeking redress and forgiveness, and he finds it.
Want to be forgiven
Edgerton’s character is a former Nazi who defected, told the FBI about the movement, and now lives under a secret identity.
— I wanted to tell about a man on the run who worked in a garden. A gangster? No, too much cliché. So I made him a Proud boy, who now wants to be forgiven. Then that he is forgiven by a young black woman, maybe it’s a fantasy.
And why did Schrader choose Joel Edgerton for the lead role?
— Because he has always felt like the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to mess with in a bar.