Master Gardener

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.

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.

"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.

I have to say, I haven't seen any of the other two movies part of this thematic trilogy, but as far as I know they're independent stories.

To start with, the story is nothing original. It's been done many times before, and better.

The story of a guy with a dark past and set of skills, retired from that life, trying to live a quiet life in a small job, but trouble comes up and the guy goes back to old habits.

I know, that's not all there is here, but the rest, honestly, didn't blow my mind neither. I just didn't connect with the characters or what they do. And it's actually weird, because I do like gardening and nature in general, but it just didn't click for me.

Also, I felt the visual aspect wasn't great. I get the pale colour palette, but still, the shots didn't catch my eye or made an impression, except for the monotony and bland character of it. I know many won't be so exigent with this aspect, but I consider it an important aspect and with so many great cinematographers in the industry, if a movie doesn't have this aspect covered, I feel frustrated and disappointed. After all, movies are a visual form of entertainment, which include other many aspects, but it's a visual thing first!

Besides all that technical criticism, I found the ending quite weird, awkward, a bit cheesy and even slightly nonsensical at some degree, considering the character Norma (S. Weaver).

On the performances side, everyone give solid acts, that's the strongest point of the movie for sure.

Quite a disappointment, I was expecting this to be a solid movie, but it ended up being a mediocre piece, for me.

Thank god for intelligent film making. This story of second chances and redemption is not without its problems but overall is time well spent if you actually want to watch a story unfold. The basic plot of bad man atoning for a past life through enabling others is a well worn furrow which usually ends in an orgy of violence or a tragic sacrifice but not so here. In Edgertons measured and nuanced performance we have a far better and more realistic journey as he demonstrates once again how underrated he is as an actor. Sigourney Weaver demonstrates just how damm good she is and relative newcomer Swindell holds her own. If I were to critise it would be the continuity and editing, at times I was left thinking that a scene was missing and some of the linkage plain didn't work, thankfully the overall arc of the story and the performances kept me interested enough to let the flaws slide. Give it a watch.