This film will make people angry, Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, The Card Counter) promised in recent interviews. “This Movie” is Master Gardener, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday. When you read the synopsis, one question springs to mind: What’s controversial about a film about a gardener?
Paul Schrader wouldn’t be Paul Schrader if this gardener didn’t carry a dark secret. He used to be a neo-Nazi, has killed people for the cause. He is tattooed all over with swastikas – and receives a young black woman as a gardener’s apprentice. Which culminates in one of the weirdest sex scenes of 2022 film.
Master Gardener doesn’t make you angry. With this announcement, Schrader undersells its minimalist thriller about the seeds of hate and the blossoms of love.
Star Wars star Joel Edgerton plays the ex-Nazi and flower lover
So after First Reformed (2017) with Ethan Hawke and The Card Counter (2021) with Oscar Isaac, Paul Schrader has a part of his again A trilogy about men who seek redemption from their guilt through work. It doesn’t quite come close to the size of its predecessors. In addition, the love relationship in the center of Master Gardener seems badly constructed. But it’s always worth it. Schrader’s film trilogy is a lesson in how much can be expressed with a few sparse images.
Joel Edgerton stars this time fresh from his Star Wars return as Uncle Owen in Obi Wan Kenobi. His gardener’s name is Narvel Roth, a name reminiscent of a recently discovered tropical reptile. Narvel knows exotic species because he works at Gracewood Gardens.
The southern home of the well-heeled Mrs. Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver) is believed to be a former plantation, meaning her wealth was bought with the blood of slaves. The most beautiful flower beds are blooming here now. In Schrader’s reduced narrative, this is more likely to be considered than formulated.
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Master Gardener
Master Gardener is told patiently and vigilantly. As with Oscar Isaac’s player in The Card Counter, a lot of time is spent watching the green-fingered artist at work. He plucks, cuts and digs. He monologues about the rules of his trade and the difference between ornamental and English gardens.
That probably sounds boring, but it isn’t. Because when Paul Schrader shows someone at work, it happens with an uncanny tension. Why does this man of all people immerse himself in this job? Why is he digging in the earth and sucking in its scent as if to merge with it? Narvel is an intense guy in an intense movie.
In a sparsely furnished garden house, he writes a diary about his knowledge of flowers and in the evening makes the strict Mrs. Haverhill happy. The widow treats people like tulips stuck in the ground in rank and file. She is the only “master” in this garden. She has Narvel Ex-Nazi in the witness protection program, already properly bred. Next up is her great-niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell from Euphoria). So the young woman from difficult circumstances is entrusted to the gardener as an apprentice. With consequences that the lady of the house would not have foreseen.
One of the year’s weirdest sex scenes is immensely cheesy and touching
Narvel and Maya grow closer. He helps her with private problems that can only be solved with broken kneecaps. Eventually Maya sees them Swastikas and White Pride slogans on his skin. That doesn’t deter her.
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Master Gardener
Schrader wants to be provocative, he openly admitted to IndieWire. There he stated: “The monstrosity of having a Proud Boy finding love was too monstrous to pass up.”
The romance culminates in an incredible strange love scene. Schrader packs the hot double striptease from Out of Sight into the American History X-Mixer. The result doesn’t look… hot.
It begins brittle and ends in kitsch. What exactly happens is not revealed, except: Narvel and Maya find happiness together in an exaggerated sex scene. It’s a utopian one Counter-proposal to racist hatred, which runs through two hundred years of American history. Stuck in the soil of this land and on the skin of Narvel. There is hardly anything outrageous about Master Gardener. Wonderfully naive at best.