Master Gardener

Sometimes, it seems, a gardener is not a simple man who just takes care flowers and herbs. Sometimes he takes form of Joel Edgerton and with an enigmatic and stoic look he riddles his audience a riddle regarding his true identity.

Narvel Roth is a well talented gardener, who works for a snob, rich and unpleasant land owner. It is not known what secret identity he has, but over the surface their relationship doesn't tell what else is there except very rich woman and her beloved employee, which prepares her garden for a flowers auction sale.

Once her grandniece enters their lives things rapidly change and the outer coating of Narvel starts to dry out and masks start to crack and fall down.

It is a classic enigmatic tale from Paul Schrader's line of creations. Though the movie is almost two hours of well-crafted tale and script, the movie maintains its relationship with the viewer and connects easily to the main characters.

It is sometimes weary but almost at all times this slow burner manages to compensate its audience and keep them involved with plot changing, while revealing small details, that will keep the tension and the viewer intriguing, regarding the following steps of the movie.

It is a movie for small festivals audiences, but it is well written, directed, shot and well performed by the main characters and another interesting creation from Schrader.

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.

"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 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.

Schrader hits his usual marks in Master Gardener, being reminiscent of Taxi Driver's cinematic good and evil struggle while having clear unique separation in both story and dialogue.

Joel Edgerton steals every scene and crafts it into his own. Brilliant acting and a wonderful cast, but the way his character attempts to maintain the garden of his own realm is the most beautiful premise within the film. There's a chaotic calm in the way the story progresses and it was nice to see chunks of backstory melded together with the real time events.

If you're a fan of any of Schrader's works, I highly recommend going to see this. While The Card Counter portrayed itself as a depressing slog that never seemed to want to find its way, Master Gardener visualizes a wholesome collection of emotions that each viewer can resonate with in their own way.