El Maestro Jardinero

I had just watched 'You Hurt My Feelings' before this one, a very poor effort at trying to make some emotions for its story, but then I stumbled upon this movie accidentally. Wow. What a difference it makes. Not only had it top-class acting in every department, but also a story so well told, I was constantly wondering where it was going. Will it be bloody as hell (what I expected), or something completely different? Real emotions ran deep in this movie, never over-explained any of them at all. The direction is spot-on, obviously, as so the score and editing. It has been simply the best effort about human emotions since I saw 'Fathers and Daughters' back in 2015.

I didn't expect much and sat for a typical plot for a typical genre. The movie started slow but went to a climax quicker than I though. The core of the film impressed me the most when you realised the garden is a symbol of life and your choice in life will nourish what comes of it. It's not too late for anythingand there's always achance to have a garden full of colours and energy.

I guess we all had to make choices in life and there and that's why there is something for everyone in this movie.

You're in it for a treat. Good writing and a better cast is something that you don't see these days.

The concept of Master Gardener wasn't new at all, "a man with a troubled past tries to restart his life and so on". I still wanted to give it a try, since the cast and the director ensured some potential.

After the credits hit there was only one question left, what was it all about? There wasn't even that much dramatic stuff happening in the film, to be hoest, and since the characters are barely transofrmed by the situations they find themselves in - there was no noticeable arcs or transformations. In the end everything stayed almost exaclty the same, including the characters.

It felt like just a recollection of a couple of weeks from these peoples lives, including long, stretched scenes of driving around, eating, narrating diaries and so on. Almost like a basic pointless re-enacted documentary.

Scenes just dragged and dragged, slowing it down as much as possible. So when it felt like the movie is going to end, I wasn't sure what story is left to wrap up, since nothing really happened. The main character changed slightly in terms of coping with his past, but didn't really change that much.

Besides some basic people-flower metaphors, there was nothing of interest in this film, so in the end, indeed, this was a waste of my time.

As the movie opens we witness Joel Edgerton as Master Gardener Narvel Roth writing in his journal with narration. What we first see of him is a mystery, but at 22 minutes in he takes off his shirt and the tattoos paint an uneasy picture of who he might be. Or at least who he was at one time.

He is employed by Sigourney Weaver as the Dowager Norma Haverhill who owns the mansion and the grounds that are a masterful garden. He also has a small staff and he spends time each day teaching them some of the finer points of gardening.

Norma approaches him, she has a request. Her grandniece, a young lady of "mixed blood", will be coming on, the hope is that she can be trained as a gardener. She will get minimum wage at first and will be provided transportation. And, since Norma is up in age, maybe the young lady can ultimately take over and carry on the family tradition. She is played by Quintessa Swindell as Maya Core.

My wife and I recognized right away that it must have been filmed in Louisiana and in fact it was, St. Francisville and New Orleans, primarily. The New Orleans scenes not far from where my wife grew up, on the West Bank.

This is a really good movie, with solid and interesting character studies of the three main characters. Each actor gives a fine performance. What you were doesn't necessarily dictate what you will become.

At home, on DVD from our public library.

"Mistress Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow?"

Frances Hodgson Burnett " The Secret Garden"

For Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver), the award-winning garden surrounding her elegant plantation-like home is doing quite well, thank you. In large part because the titular horticulturist of The Master Gardner, Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton), has curated the beds to the highest quality.

However, this is a Paul Schrader movie, and Narvel is an inscrutable loner with a dicey past who can't hide from his it or his demons. Writer/director Schrader meticulously crafts characters with pasts that slow-burn style invade that garden, so to speak, with potentially dangerous outcomes.

No surprise that this careful loner, Narvel, is a former white supremacist in a protection plan that covers him until his garden grows a lovely niece of Norma, Maya ( Quintessa Swindell), who is smart and alluring and quietly involved in drugs with the unfortunate interaction of her dealer boyfriend. Yes, she's another character with a dark past.

The other major player, Norma, is so aloof and domineering, the essence of white privilege, that her persona damages whomever she owns, like Narvel and Maya. Not only does she demand Narvel's physical comforts, but she also stays away from Maya for a while before she visits her on a job as an intern in the garden. The weeds are waiting for a negligent moment when they can fulfill their appointed fate, the compromising of the grounds and the family itself.

Schrader works out the fate of the players and the garden in Greek-tragic style, where character will out and life move on. The cinematography is elegant and low-key both when it zooms in on the flowers and the faces of these gifted actors. Weaver is stoic and reserved, Edgerton plays careful and coiled, and Swindell is a siren, well-meaning but lethally alluring.

The Master Gardener is my kind of beautiful and thoughtful drama playing out big themes in a small environ, albeit a dynamic metaphor for growth amid darkness. In a sense, it fulfills Schrader's devotion to redemption, where he almost always (his trilogy starting with First Reformed and Card Counter ) works his protagonists' demons to death with eventual goodness.