Mas­ter Gardener

“Gar­den­ing is a belief in the future,” Nar­val Roth (Joel Edger­ton) tells us in a mea­sured voice over, as he – like almost all Schrad­er pro­tag­o­nists – scrib­bles away in his jour­nal. ​“A belief in things going accord­ing to plan.” As the Mas­ter Gar­den­er at the Grace­wood Estate in New Orleans, he’s a man whose life is defined by atten­tion to detail. He keeps a spread­sheet of all the plants in the gar­den, and when they’re going to bloom. The cot­tage on the grounds in which he resides is spar­tan and order­ly. He occa­sion­al­ly attends din­ner with his employ­er Nor­ma Haver­hill (Sigour­ney Weaver) and they might even sleep togeth­er. Life is good. Every­thing is going accord­ing to plan.

His mod­est exis­tence is upend­ed when Norma’s estranged grand­niece Maya (Quin­tes­sa Swindell) arrives, and Roth is charged with tak­ing her on as an appren­tice. An orphan drug addict with no one else to turn to, Maya is offered a life­line by Nor­ma which she reluc­tant­ly accepts. A slight­ly hes­i­tant Roth takes her under his wing and begins show­ing her the art of hor­ti­cul­ture, del­i­cate­ly tend­ing the gar­dens togeth­er and grow­ing clos­er in the process.

But Roth – like all Schrad­er pro­tag­o­nists – is har­bour­ing a dark secret. A for­mer Neo Nazi in wit­ness pro­tec­tion after he flipped sides and gave up his accom­plices to the author­i­ties, Roth still bears the marks of his past, both men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly, in the form of alarm­ing SS and swasti­ka tat­toos across his chest and back. Under­stand­ably, he’s not much for tak­ing his kit off.

Maya is drawn to Roth, who shows her the first kind­ness she’s expe­ri­enced in quite a while, and they bond over their sub­stance abuse issues. Roth takes Maya to her first NA meet­ing. He threat­ens her drug-deal­ing ex and his lack­ey with a pair of seca­teurs. Roth wor­ries (quite under­stand­ably) that Maya, who is mixed race, might be put off if she sees his giant Nazi ink.

Paul Schrad­er has been deal­ing with the com­plex­i­ties of mod­ern mas­culin­i­ty – par­tic­u­lar­ly men who have done ter­ri­ble things – for decades now, but his most recent work in First Reformed and The Card Counter ranks among his best. Togeth­er with Mas­ter Gar­den­er, they form a sort of tril­o­gy about the lim­its and lengths of faith: in one­self; in one anoth­er; in one’s mak­er; in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of redemption.

Roth’s past haunts him, as well it should, and he has found com­fort in a new set of rules – those of nature. He has much in com­mon with William Tell in The Card Counter, but the impact in Mas­ter Gar­den­er is dulled slight­ly for its famil­iar­i­ty, and the lack of insight we’re afford­ed into why Roth was so com­mit­ted to white suprema­cy in the first place. In fact, there’s a sense he only gave it up because he was arrest­ed, which makes his blos­som­ing rela­tion­ship with Maya all the hard­er to digest.

The stakes also feel sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er this time around – the worst that our char­ac­ters endure is a spot of light gar­den van­dal­ism. The beau­ty in Schrader’s work has always been in the rela­tion­ship between penance and abso­lu­tion, which feels notice­ably absent here. It’s a shame because the trio of Edger­ton, Swindell, and Weaver deliv­er strong per­for­mances, and Devonte Hynes’ roman­tic score with a slight edge of som­bre­ness is nice­ly atmos­pher­ic, but the film’s third act feels too neat and uncon­vinc­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the sharp­ness of the con­clu­sion in Schrader’s last two films. More­over – do we real­ly need to watch anoth­er Neo-Nazi redemp­tion narrative?

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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