10 Recent Movies Nobody Saw Coming
2. Master Gardener
Paul Schrader's new film Master Gardener is the final part in a thematic cinematic trilogy - following First Reformed and The Card Counter - centered around troubled protagonists reckoning with their dark pasts while crossing paths with younger people.
But while Schrader's two prior films dealt with a theistically conflicted priest and soldier guilty of war crimes, Master Gardener goes in a decidedly more challenging, confronting, and unexpected direction.
It's eventually revealed that horticulturalist protagonist Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton) is actually a former white supremacist in witness protection, whose name and identity were changed after he betrayed his associates to the authorities.
Schrader's film asks provocative questions about a man's ability to find forgiveness when facing a heinous past, and releasing in a climate as prone to kneejerk reaction as the current one - where nuance is hard and everyone needs their quick take - the movie has unsurprisingly proved divisive.
According to Schrader, the Toronto International Film Festival even rejected Master Gardener for treating racism "lightly," and though it was still broadly well-received by critics, following two widely acclaimed, meditative character dramas from the director, its subject matter came as quite the surprise.