Does this fit in with the gardening metaphors? Is Maya's mixed race supposed to be more meaningful because of his past? Are we really supposed to buy their connection or their ability to save one another? It's a little murky. And it certainly does nothing with the idea of Narvel being torn - once the young one enters the picture, beyond one rejection out of decorum, you know exactly where Narvel has fixated his gaze. That premise, while possibly interesting, is really only given one scene that’s not quite as revelatory as Schrader suggested. “What would happen in ‘Taxi Driver’ if Cybill Shepherd and Jodie Foster went out to get coffee?” he asked. Maya (Quintessa Swindell) quickly takes to gardening, clashes with Norma (who called her “mixed blood” and is reluctant to form a relationship) and falls for Narvel.īefore he started shooting the film, Schrader said he was thinking about a man torn between two women, one old enough to be his mother, one young enough to be his daughter. The chaos factor comes in the form of Norma Haverhill’s great-niece, whose drug-addict mother has died and who she decides should apprentice with Narvel in the garden. Like any good gardener knows, he can try to manage nature but that only goes so far. He is reformed now, mostly, but the music gets ominous when the shirt comes off and he stares at his past in the mirror. This dutiful, buttoned up green thumb has underneath his practical coveralls a body covered in telling tattoos and a memory full of racially motivated murders. And it invites some memorable writing, mostly in voiceover, as Norvel opines and explains that “gardening is a belief in the future.”īut Narvel didn’t come into the world as a gardener, or Narvel for that matter - these are identities he adopted later in life. Actually, that’s true of most Schrader films. Even if it’s not a perfect trilogy, it’s at least in dialogue with his recent films “The Card Counter” and “First Reformed,” both about solitary, tortured men whose professions double as metaphor. This story is about a man with a violent past who has been saved by the precision of gardening. We don't even get to see the charity auction in full swing, never fulfilling Edgerton’s Narvel Roth (yes, Narvel) tease how much fun it is to “watch grown men in pastel pants outbid each other for a flower.” It feels like a set - not a place that a real human being lives. The house, though grand, is also sparse in its décor. There even is a palpable (and, I’d imagine, intentional) artificiality to the whole endeavor, creating an unease that looms over the most mundane and superficially pleasant interactions. There’s even a big charity auction coming up that she and the gardening staff are intensely focused on.īut this being a Schrader film (he wrote and directed), it is mostly window dressing. She also has a horticulturist (Joel Edgerton) in her employ who she occasionally calls on for extracurricular, indoor activities. Sigourney Weaver is a wealthy dowager with a stately name (Norma Haverhill), a large house and a dog she’s named porch dog. Paul Schrader plants the seeds of an intriguing melodrama in his latest creation “ Master Gardener.”
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