At the Venice Film Festival, Paul Schrader presents his latest gem, “Master Gardener”

As the Venice Film Festival negotiated the turning point of the first weekend, a well-deserved Golden Lion was awarded on Saturday, September 3, for his entire career to American screenwriter and director Paul Schrader, 76, the one of the last Hollywood mavericks of the 1970s, whose work explores the intricacies of the human soul. At the end of the ceremony held in the vast Sala Grande was also presented, out of competition, his last and twenty-third feature film, an old master film at the height of his art, without a doubt the most beautiful object seen in this stage of the festivities, all sections combined.

After the two previous installments on the obsession with repentance, Master Gardener comes to close a triptych in line with the Diary of a country priest (1951), by his master Robert Bresson.

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Like the Calvinist pastor of On the way to redemption (2017) and the poker player of The Card Counter (2021), this last film centers on a character voluntarily absorbed by a routine, in order to stifle the still burning burn of a cursed past, which ebbs in bits.

Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton), head horticulturist of a vast private estate, maintains for his owner, the wealthy Mrs Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver), organizer of charity galas, the sumptuous flower gardens that make her reputation. The meticulous care he puts into it contains the seed of redemption. A former prisoner on parole, the gardener indeed drags a liability as a henchman for a Proud Boys-style neo-Nazi militia, of which he keeps the shameful trace on his body: swastikas and other symbols tattooed on his chest and back. The mistress of the house, with whom he has a very codified sexual relationship, entrusts him with her Métis great-niece, Maya (Quintessa Swindell), a young woman adrift. The niece and the gardener fall in love, not without the street and its slippery slopes reminding them, precipitating the hour of choice.

Elementary Reasons for Redemption

Simplicity, here, is essential: a handful of characters, a few sets, the elementary motifs of redemption that Paul Schrader tirelessly brings back to life, but each choice of staging counts, each gesture, each cut, each look contributes to lead the drama at destination.

The practice of gardening, this art of making flowers grow (which results in a very beautiful credits in the form of a blooming bouquet), is taken very seriously by the filmmaker: the way his hero experiences it is of the order of discipline, that is to say a matter of learning and ethics, a sober and transcendental relationship to the world. “Gardening is a profession of faith in the future”, he says, writing his diary, like the recent heroes of Schrader, who thus make their examination of conscience. In a very beautiful passage, he invites his young disciple to smell the earth by plunging his whole face into it: a sensual experience of reality without which spirituality knows no foundation.

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