Susan Granger’s review of “Master Gardener” (Magnolia Pictures)
If you’re a Paul Schrader fan, perhaps you missed the dramatic thriller “Master Gardener” the third in his ‘God’s Lonely Man’ trilogy that started with “First Reformed” (2022) and continued with “The Card Counter” (2021).
Obsessively contained and solitary Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton) is the scholarly head horticulturist at formal, ornately manicured Gracewood Gardens, a vast former Louisiana plantation owned by wealthy Baroness Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver). “Gardening is a belief in the future,” he says.
When his imperiously entitled patroness/benefactor asks him to take on her estranged, bi-racial grand-niece, Maya (Quintessa Swindell) as an apprentice, suddenly his highly organized life is in grave danger.
From the moment of her arrival, 20’ish Maya, who inherited drug issues from her mother, threatens obliging Narvel’s meticulously ordered existence. A former white supremacist, now in witness protection, carefully covering his tell-tale neo-Nazi tattoos with a black turtle-neck, long-sleeved sweater and overalls, Narvel becomes Maya’s mentor, then her lover, a relationship that inevitably leads to violence, tempered by grace.
Perhaps best known as the screenwriter of Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed “Taxi Driver” & “Raging Bull,” Schrader wrote the book “Transcendental Style in Film” (1972) in which he delineated an ascetic form of filmmaking that “seeks to maximize the mystery of existence; it eschews all conventional interpretations of reality, realism, naturalism, psychologism, romanticism, expressionism, impressionism and, finally rationalism.”
Using the metaphor of gardening – how it calms the mind and mends the soul -Schrader centers this character-driven film once again on a tormented man in turmoil, writing “The seeds of love grow like the seeds of hate” in his journal, trying in vain not to allow the secreted skulls and swastikas to surface.
Then there’s Schrader’s perennial question of transgression and forgiveness, tracing back to the Calvinist fatalism of the Christian Reformed Church in which he was raised.
Also, the title has a double meaning. While “Master Gardener” designates a certification program providing intensive horticultural training, in this instance it also refers to the Nazi “master race,” indicating blond, blue-eyed German people.
Bottom line: too much angst, too little payoff.
FYI: Zendaya was Schrader’s first choice to play Maya but their salary discussions soon disintegrated.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Master Gardener” is a stoic, serious, even severe 6, streaming on Hulu and Apple TV.
