[FILM]
★★★★
OUT 26 MAY / CERT TBC 107 MINS
DIRECTOR Paul Schrader
CAST Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, Quintessa Swindell, Esai Morales
PLOT An unassuming horticulturalist (Edgerton) working in the gardens of a grand New Orleans mansion prepares for a yearly flower show to raise money for charity. That calm is threatened when the estate’s wealthy matriarch (Weaver) asks him to train her wayward grand-niece (Swindell), and his own dark secrets come to the fore.
MASTER GARDENER MARKS the conclusion of Paul Schrader’s loose trilogy about broken men seeking redemption in modern America. After the deep questioning of faith suffered by both Ethan Hawke’s alcoholic minister in First Reformed and Oscar Isaac’s convicted Abu Ghraib-torturer-turned-gambler in The Card Counter, here we get Joel Edgerton as a haunted man willing to live with past guilt without sacrificing what he has left, while keenly looking at what lies ahead.
Edgerton’s Narvel Roth is introduced as a typical Schrader ‘lonely man’. Like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver — still Schrader’s most famous screenplay — and the men of this recent trilogy, Narvel addresses us in a voiceover, and writes his diary alone in his small, empty home. He carefully explains the thinking behind types of gardens and gardening methods, prophetically intoning, “A garden is a belief in the future, that change will happen.” Roth is the chief gardener at Gracewood Gardens, a beautiful expanse of flowers and shrubs attached to a New Orleans family estate owned by Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver).
Narvel’s small team is diligently preparing the gardens for a yearly charity event when Norma, who calls Narvel “sweet pea” and has weekly trysts with him, asks him to train her mixed-race grand-niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell) in his green-fingered ways. Weaver’s expert handling of Norma’s familial guilt, or lack of it, is in keeping with the steady, subtle balance at play throughout Master Gardener; like Schrader’s crisp dialogue — or the finest plants Gracewood has to offer ��
