Let’s get to the new and then get to the semi-old, something we missed back in the day. Indiewire recently invited over 35 filmmakers to participate in a list of their favorite films of 2023. One of the filmmakers is the always-controversial Paul Schrader, who has named “Master Gardener” his own movie, one of his fave films of 2023.
Schader’s list in order goes like this:
- Master Gardener
- Oppenheimer
- Barbie
- American Fiction
- Maestro
- Fallen Leaves
- Leave the World Behind
- Last Summer
Gotta love that he put it above Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig’s highest-grossing films of 2023 movies. And hey, maybe if you’re not your own champion, who will be, right?
In case you haven’t seen it, “Master Gardener” is quite good. It’s a moralistic crime thriller and the third in his recent “God’s Lonely Men” trilogy, which includes “First Reformed” and “The Card Counter.” The film stars Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, and Quintessa Swindell and centers on a meticulous horticulturist (Edgerton) who is devoted to tending the grounds of a beautiful estate and pandering to his employer, the wealthy dowager (Weaver). But the gardener’s life changes when he’s forced to take on the doyenne’s recently orphaned grandniece as his apprentice. It’s arguably the weakest of the three in his recent trilogy, but it is still quite good and fairly underrated, too.
Meanwhile, Schrader has updated us on a project we first broke details about because he announced them at the 2022 New York Film Festival screening of “Master Gardener” that we were at. At the time, Schrader said that his next film would be about a trauma nurse in Puerto Rico. Schrader has since said it’s about a female “Taxi Driver” character and would fit into his “God’s Lonely Man” trilogy. “So, I’m trying to write about this character again, but I’ll have to step aside, and it’s time to make him a her,” he said. “It’s [about] a trauma nurse in Puerto Rico.”
What we didn’t realize is that Schrader no longer plans to direct it; instead, having given it to Elisabeth Moss to direct, the actor who has shifted into directing during her time on “The Handmaid’s Tale” (she’s directed half a dozen episodes now, plus two more from her “Shining Girls” limited series she stared in).
In a recent interview with La Monde, Schrader talked about the project briefly, saying, “I wrote a “feminine” screenplay, which Elisabeth Moss will direct.”
Evidently, he told Indiewire more about the movie earlier this year, which is now titled “R.N.”
“I wanted to do a film about female sexual irresponsibility, mainly behavior that just causes trouble,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is really good.’ But there was a lot of explicit sex in it, masturbation. I’m an old male. ‘How am I going to direct this?’ This is not my part of town. There are a lot of female directors out there now, not like decades ago when there were only two or three. I feel out of place here, I feel like I’m in Spike Lee’s house telling him how to redecorate. And so, I decided not to do it. And then I subsequently have now offered it to Elisabeth Moss for her to star and direct.”
Schrader’s next film, “Oh Canada,” has actually already been shot and could potentially arrive in late 2024. “Oh Canada” is based on the 2021 novel “Foregone “by Russell Banks, and it stars Richard Gere, Jacob Elordi, Kristine Froseth, Uma Thurman, and Micheal Imperioli.
The story centers on the life of a tormented writer on the brink of death, a Canadian-American leftist who fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War draft. The film stars Richard Gere as the older version of the writer and Jacob Elordi as the younger version of the character in the late 1960s.
Regarding “Oh, Canada,” Schrader revealed more details about the plot and the lead character to La Monde and suggested the film will be lean and mean.
“Yes, he’s a deserter. He fled the United States for Canada, where he became a renowned filmmaker,” he said of the character Geree eventually plays. “As he approaches death, he reveals to one of his students that his entire life is a lie. Look what Richard Gere will look like [shows a photo on his cell phone]. It hasn’t changed that much since “American Gigolo” (1980) [their previous collaboration]… It’s the first time, since “Mishima” (1985), that I’ve made a puzzle film. Or an assembly of scattered memories, heterogeneous formats, and fragments. Filming only lasted seventeen days. I kept all the scenes shot. The first cut lasted ninety minutes. The final cut is at ninety-one minutes. This is how I work. To the bone. Do you know how long my bedside film, “Pickpocket” (1959), by Robert Bresson, is? Seventy-five minutes.”
Schrader said, “‘Oh, Canada’ will deal with some of this,” he explained about many of the wars raging in the world right now, from the Middle East to Ukraine.
“Propaganda has been aggressively demonstrated to work,” he continued. “Commonly accepted knowledge is being torn apart by the Internet. Henry Kissinger [former Secretary of State and historic figure in American diplomacy] thought that democracy and technology were the two horses of history and that they were harnessed together. Every day, the news invalidates this idea. The Russians or Palestinians claim they were attacked first, and on the Web, there are millions of people who believe them. I attended the Mass of the Annunciation in a monastery overlooking Avellino. It could have been a synagogue or a mosque: the ritual, the songs, and the obedience are similar from one cult to another. These people do not kill each other for religious reasons but for questions of power. John Lennon said: “I have nothing against God, as long as we don’t put him under a roof.”
Well, it wouldn’t be Paul Schrader if it wasn’t a moralistic and controversial film, right?