Review: 'Master Gardener' is the work of a true film artist continually striving to connect his tortured soul to ours
Just in case you're worrying, "Master Gardener," only in theaters, is not a dry lesson in horticulture. Writer-director Paul Schrader is still intent on gripping us with a topic that's haunted him since he wrote the script for 1976's "Taxi Driver" -- the timeless temptation of sin.
As a filmmaker ("American Gigolo, "Hardcore"), Schrader -- raised a strict Calvinist -- has never lost his focus on the war between flesh and spirit. "Master Gardener" completes a trilogy, preceded by 2018's "First Reformed" and "2021's "Card Counter," that Schrader refers to as "man-in-a-room movies" about isolation, violence and the remote possibility of redemption.
These themes all apply to Narvel Roth, an indelibly implosive Joel Edgerton. His rigid posture and military-style haircut seem at odds with the incongruous delicacy Narvel shows at work with his flowers and plants. "Gardening," he says, "is a belief in the future."
For nearly a decade, Narvel has practiced his art at Gracewood Gardens, the former slave plantation in Louisiana that he tends for the rich, imperious Norma Haverhill (a dynamite Sigourney Weaver), whose sexual demands also require his attention. She calls him "Sweet Pea."
Narvel writes a journal in his lonely room, a technique Schrader frequently uses to enter the mind of his tormented protagonists. In voiceover, Narvel extolls the smell and feel of the soil, a buzz he comparers to "pulling a trigger." Whoops!
This master gardener is tormented by his criminal past, which Schrader lets slip when Narvel removes his shirt at home, exposing white supremacist tattoos and a back painted with swastikas that would be the envy of toxic Proud Boys everywhere.
Narvel's memories flood back when Norma orders him to take on an apprentice in the form of her twentysomething, mixed-race grand-niece Maya, a druggie played with grit and grace by nonbinary trans actor Quintessa Swindell ("Black Adam," "Euphoria").
It's uncomfortable to say the least watching this older man, enjoying witness protection for betraying his neo-Nazi friends, form an inappropriate relationship with a much younger woman who once represented Narvel's unrepentant race hatred.
The image of Maya's naked flesh against the evil symbols inked on Narvel's body is a devastating juxtaposition. Yet Narvel and Schrader believe that genuine love and something close to redemption can develop out of such contradictory passions.
Edgerton and Swindell, mesmerizing in a role once intended for Zendaya, bring flesh-and-blood vitality to roles that in lesser hands might be cardboard stand-ins for the racial war that rages unabated in our current world.
Vigilante fury rears up -- this is Schrader, after all -- when Narvel uses garden shears and a trophy Luger Norma's daddy brought home from the war to destroy the drug dealers who show up to remind Maya that her junkie days cast a long shadow.
A few critics have faulted Schrader for being austere, wordy, repetitive and implausible. They're not wrong. But Schrader, 76, is blissfully unafraid of making us squirm, using radical provocation and rogue poetry to deepen our understanding of human fallibility and aspiration.
"Master Gardener" lacks the visual and spiritual audacity of "First Reformed," the 2018 film that earned Schrader his first Oscar nomination for a screenplay, once again exposing the Academy's shameful lateness in recognizing a major talent.
Don't make the same mistake. "Master Gardener," with its clunky exposition, fragmented flashbacks and pat ending, falls short of peak Schrader. But this is the work of a true film artist continually striving to connect his tortured soul to ours. You will be transfixed.
