MASTER GARDENER

If you’re familiar with Paul Schrader’s films then you know to expect an homage to Bresson at some point (Pickpocket & Diary Of Country Priest to be specific). There’s also usually a continuation of his own regular themes (the lonely dude writing in his journal, odd race relations, weird redemption arcs, etc). Master Gardener is no exception. This is essentially Paul Schrader trying to play some of his greatest hits with slightly different instruments…

Taxi Driver /
Master Gardener

Taxi Driver /
Master Gardener

First Reformed /
Master Gardener

Taxi Driver /
Master Gardener

First Reformed /
Master Gardener

The movie that was most important to me was Pickpocket, because when I saw that in 1969 it made me realise that there was a connection between a religious upbringing and my profane presence and there was a connection to style, and out of that came the book Transcendental Style. It almost made me realise that there was actually a place for me in filmmaking, I was a critic and I didn’t think there was, but then I saw this movie about a guy who writes in a journal and goes out and steals stuff and I thought, I can make something like that. Then three years later I wrote Taxi Driver - Paul Schrader, hotcorn.com

Pickpocket /
Master Gardener

Pickpocket /
Master Gardener

Diary Of A Country Priest /
Master Gardener

While the imagery in Master Gardener draws heavily from Robert Bresson, the deeper plot does not. This is very much a Paul Schrader story. A former nazi extremist (Narvel) living under a new identity as a gardener is given the task of mentoring his boss’ biracial grandniece (Maya). Maybe Schrader thought having a “full” Black woman would be a bit too much on the nose so he made the Maya character half Black and half White to play up the internal racial complexity?

Narvel’s relationship with Maya goes from mentor to father figure to…somethin’ else (the relationship between Narvel & Maya is almost an updated reworking of Travis & Betsy from Taxi Driver right down to the climactic shootout).


If you’ve followed my blog for the last few years then you know one of my biggest pet peeves with movies these days is that they seem to be made with nothing but twitter discourse in mind (inside jokes/threads that only twitter regulars would understand, naive & uninformed views on representation, pandering to some political/social view, etc). Master Gardener does all these things but I’m not totally mad it this time because it goes beneath the surface of the basic twitter/online discourse that so many of today’s movies play in to. Part of me wishes I didn’t watch the trailer for this because it kind of lays the entire movie out and did everything I predicted it was going to do. Schrader touches on everything from the weird interracial attraction certain specific women of color have towards certain specific white men to the folks that try to justify said attraction.

Now…to be clear - this movie is a mess. It isn’t good but I didn’t feel like my time was wasted watching it if that makes sense (this was first thing I’ve seen in the theater in six months). No matter how much this movie tries to push the redemption angle, Narvel is a terrible human being who doesn’t deserve forgiveness. But that’s just me. I love Paul Schrader but part of me feels like he didn’t have a realistic Black audience in mind when making Master Gardener. This is a wet dream for contrarians or people who like to push the “well…it’s complicated” narrative (it isn’t that complicated to me)..

I’m sure Master Gardener will be the cause of some interesting think-pieces from both intelligent/thoughtful movie lovers with nuance and knee-jerk idiots that move strictly off of emotion.