3 Films For Grown-ups: Paul Schrader’s ‘Redemption’ Trilogy

Paul Schrad­er began as a film crit­ic before mov­ing into script writ­ing. The first script he man­aged to sell was for The Yakuza, which he wrote with his broth­er Leonard in 1974, which sparked a bid­ding war and end­ed up sell­ing for an eye-water­ing $325,000. 

He then went on to write Taxi Dri­ver, in 1976, and Rag­ing Bull, in 1980, both for Scors­ese, before mov­ing into direct­ing himself. 

For a while dur­ing the 1980s, it looked like he might have been the great white hope of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma, as films like Amer­i­can Gigo­lo (’80) and Mishi­ma: A Life in Four Chap­ters (’85) man­aged to inves­ti­gate moral decay and soci­etal dis­in­te­gra­tion in a form that saw him explore the lan­guage and gram­mar of the medi­um he was work­ing in, to daz­zling effect.

But things tailed off some­what in the 1990s and 2000s, as cocaine and bills got the bet­ter of him, and more and more of his ener­gies were spent in just putting bread on the table. So in the 2010s, he embarked on a reboot, as he sought to remould him­self in response to the changes brought about by the onslaught of the dig­i­tal revolution.

And in 2017, as he moved into his 70s, that process, some­what improb­a­bly, sud­den­ly burst forth into flower. And over the fol­low­ing 6 years, he pro­duced what came to be viewed as an unof­fi­cial tril­o­gy around the theme of redemption. 

The first of his ‘man in a room’ movies, as he calls them, was First Reformed from 2017. Ethan Hawke plays a Protes­tant min­is­ter whose life falls apart after the death of his son on active ser­vice in Iraq. His response is to retreat from the real world and into the sanc­tu­ary of his ministry. 

There, he waits for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to atone for his sins, as it had been he who had pushed his son to enlist. And a sense of impend­ing tragedy builds inex­orably, as he con­cludes that only an act of self-sac­ri­fice can mit­i­gate the cor­rup­tion and moral decay of the world he sees around him. Into all of which arrives the preg­nant wife of a trou­bled parishioner.

The Card Counter, from 2021, sees Oscar Isaac in retreat from the world, dogged­ly avoid­ing the ghosts of his past by bury­ing him­self per­ma­nent­ly in the moment. So he’s laz­er focused on the day to day busi­ness of win­ning just enough at the casi­nos to get by, with­out ever win­ning so much to draw attention. 

But he is befriend­ed by a young man, and then a woman, who seem to offer alter­na­tive pos­si­ble futures. Does he fol­low the path that the young man is intent on, and purge him­self of his suf­fo­cat­ing past with the ulti­mate act of self-sac­ri­fice? Or depart with her, to leave that past behind for good?

Mas­ter Gar­den­er, from 2023, sees Joel Edger­ton work­ing obses­sive­ly as the gar­den­er on the grounds of a for­mer plan­ta­tion. He seems to have suc­cess­ful­ly buried his past and now divides his time between the needs of the gar­den, and of his host, the impe­ri­ous Sigour­ney Weaver. 

But when Weaver tasks him with men­tor­ing her viva­cious if trou­bled grand­niece, it nev­er occurs to either of them that the old­er man and the much younger, bi-racial girl could con­ceiv­ably come togeth­er, espe­cial­ly giv­en his past. 

But fall in love they do, and the hav­oc that this results in will either see him leave that past behind for good, or see him ulti­mate­ly buried by it. 

Schrad­er has carved out a niche for him­self as the last man stand­ing in a van­ished world. He’s the one film mak­er still mak­ing grown-up films that unapolo­get­i­cal­ly explore adult themes and com­plex ideas.

None of these three films is a sin­gu­lar mas­ter­piece, there’s no Mishi­ma here in oth­er words, but all three are riv­et­ing dra­mas, tight­ly script­ed, and impec­ca­bly made, by a film mak­er who assumes that his audi­ence is as intel­li­gent as he is. 

And one who sees no oppo­si­tion in enter­tain­ing his audi­ence, and in simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ask­ing them to explore the world we live in, in a deep and gen­uine­ly thought-pro­vok­ing, philo­soph­i­cal way. 

Start with Mas­ter Gar­den­er and work your way back to First Reformed, which is the strongest of the three. 

Watch the trail­er to First Reformed here:

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The Bureau’, France’s Superior Answer to Slow Horses

The Bureau (Le Bureau des Légen­des) in ques­tion is France’s DGSE, a mix­ture of the British MI6 and America’s CIA. They’re the agency in charge of field­ing for­eign agents in areas of strate­gic inter­est to France, prin­ci­pal­ly through­out the Mid­dle East and across North Africa. 

Ignore the expen­sive and whol­ly un-nec­es­sary Hol­ly­wood remake, The Agency, notwith­stand­ing the pres­ence of the always watch­able Michael Fass­binder, and go direct­ly to the orig­i­nal, of which there are 5 sea­sons, first shown between 2015–2020.

What’s so impres­sive about the series is that it rings so clear­ly and tri­umphant­ly true. Obvi­ous­ly, that’s due in part to the fact that’s it’s based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of whis­tle blow­ers who’d pre­vi­ous­ly worked there. 

But it’s impos­si­ble not to sus­pect that if any indi­vid­ual is respon­si­ble for its pal­pa­ble sense of ver­ité, it’s the show’s star, Math­ieu Kasso­vitz.

Kasso­vitz had pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten and direct­ed the impos­si­bly grip­ping La Haine, which some­how man­aged to cap­ture the bristling ten­sions sim­mer­ing in the ban­lieues, and the racism that that was fuelled by, in a way that out­siders rarely suc­ceed in doing.

The Bureau is a lot more sedate than that, but it has that same sense of hav­ing been made by peo­ple who real­ly under­stand the ter­rain they’re surveying. 

As the Econ­o­mist not­ed, it fea­tures no spe­cial effects and few stunts, but what it gives you instead is a win­dow into the world of inter­na­tion­al espi­onage, where life is as mun­dane and pet­ty as it is in all offices. But where the con­se­quences of actions that are fuelled by base desires are gen­uine­ly unimag­in­ably high. 

The shows believ­abil­i­ty is fur­ther enhanced by the sub­plots, which are set in Syr­ia, Alge­ria and Iran. Where most shows would begin with an estab­lish­ing shot of a minaret, framed by the moun­tains above Tehran, with a title that reads ‘Iran’, before return­ing to a set some­where in the south of France, the Bureau is as focused on life in Syr­ia and Iran as it is on France.

And they’re as metic­u­lous in their research into life lived there, in the field, as they are about what the pen push­ers get up to back at head­quar­ters in Paris.

It’s won­der­ful­ly refresh­ing to watch some­thing that pre­sumes that you’re as intel­li­gent, and as curi­ous, as every­body involved in the show itself is. And sim­ply assumes that you can appre­ci­ate the rel­e­vance of what’s said and done, in the con­text of where it all happens. 

For all of which, it couldn’t pos­si­bly be more French. If Call My Agent was a very specif­i­cal­ly French response to Friends, this is their reac­tion to hav­ing seen the Wire.

Wide­ly described as not mere­ly one of the best French TV series ever, but more prop­er­ly as sim­ply one of the best TV series of the last few decades, if all of this is news to you, as it was for me a few months ago, you’re in for a treat. Enjoy.

Watch the trail­er below:

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Becoming Led Zeppelin: Came Saw Conquered

To their detrac­tors, Led Zep­pelin were far too com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as artists, and all too quick­ly suc­cumbed to what then become a clichéd descent into a hedo­nis­tic hell of their own mak­ing, with the inevitably trag­ic result.

What this exhil­a­rat­ing doc­u­men­tary fea­ture shows is that they’re far bet­ter under­stood as the spir­i­tu­al fore­bears of Radio­head. A band of, in this case, four incred­i­bly dri­ven musi­cal mavens hell bent on pur­su­ing a very par­tic­u­lar musi­cal direc­tion, who, inex­plic­a­bly, wake up one morn­ing to dis­cov­er they’ve con­quered the world, notwith­stand­ing the sin­gu­lar­i­ty of that musi­cal vision.

One of the rea­sons the doc­u­men­tary works so well is that, hav­ing shunned all and any pub­lic­i­ty for their entire careers, espe­cial­ly doc­u­men­taries like these, now that they’ve all agreed to final­ly par­tic­i­pate in one, they are each uncom­mon­ly can­did and open.

And they are ‘all’ here, as the three sur­viv­ing mem­bers are accom­pa­nied by the voice of drum­mer John Bon­ham, thanks to a recent­ly unearthed inter­view that Bon­ham gave before his death in 1980.

The rea­son these hith­er­to reclus­es have sud­den­ly opened up so casu­al­ly is the mutu­al respect that they and the film mak­ers enjoy. And the rea­son for that is Amer­i­can Epic, which was the project that film mak­ers Bernard MacMa­hon and Alli­son McGour­ty made before this one.

Amer­i­can Epic, which I reviewed ear­li­er here, is a 3 part doc­u­men­tary that charts the birth of record­ed music in Amer­i­ca in the 1920s, and the musi­cal gen­res that that gave birth to; the blues, coun­try, blue­grass, RnB, rock ‘n’ roll, rap, hip hop and all man­ner of pop.

The argu­ment this film makes, entire­ly con­vinc­ing­ly, is the Led Zep­pelin are the miss­ing link that con­nects every­thing that came before 1969, and every­thing that fol­lowed, after 1970. 

As much as any­thing else, this is cul­tur­al his­to­ry rather than mere music his­to­ry, in much the same way that Peter Gar­al­nick’s tow­er­ing Sweet Soul Music is as much about race and the Amer­i­ca of the 1950s and ‘60s, as it is about Sam Cooke and James Brown

So what we get for most of the first hour is a his­to­ry of 1960s Lon­don, and the dif­fer­ent paths that the four men take before final­ly form­ing the band. 

There’s Jim­my Page, becom­ing one of the most in-demand ses­sion gui­tarists, and then pro­duc­ers in town, work­ing with every­one from The Kinks and The Who to The Rolling Stones and Van Mor­ri­son

While Bassist, and then arranger, John Paul Jones was sim­i­lar­ly record­ing with all of the above, which is how they meet. While also arrang­ing for the likes of Françoise Hardy, Shirley Bassey, Dusty Spring­field and the Walk­er Brothers.

Even­tu­al­ly, in 1968, Page teams up with Jones to form a band, and, some­how, they enlist the tal­ents of the force of nature that is Robert Plant, and his close friend and col­lab­o­ra­tor, drum­mer John Bonham. 

In those days, the genial Plant was repelled from con­ven­tion­al soci­ety and main­stream cul­ture in much the same way that elec­trons are in per­pet­u­al flight from the pro­tons they orbit. Remark­ably, the sec­ond he and the oth­er three start play­ing togeth­er, every­thing fits into place, and sparks explode spec­tac­u­lar­ly into the ether.

When the film final­ly gives us a taste of the actu­al music, its sound is sig­nif­i­cant­ly rich­er from hav­ing been posit­ed in the midst of the cul­tur­al and musi­cal land­scape that it sprang from. 

Dif­fer­ent in size and scope to Amer­i­can Epic, Becom­ing Led Zep­pelin is every bit as impres­sive, and makes for absolute­ly manda­to­ry view­ing. And should, if pos­si­ble, be seen in a cinema. 

And I defy you to resist imme­di­ate­ly going in search of, at the very least, those first two albums the sec­ond you exit the cinema.

Watch the trail­er for Becom­ing Led Zep­pelin here:

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The Brutalist, Nice Video Shame About the Song 

As you’ll no doubt have heard by now, The Bru­tal­ist is either a mod­ern mas­ter­piece rep­re­sent­ing the great white hope of world cin­e­ma, or a moral­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble artis­tic trav­es­ty. As usu­al, it’s noth­ing like as excit­ing as all that, and lands fair­ly and square­ly some­where in the middle.

In the first of its two l o n g and mean­der­ing halves, we’re intro­duced to Lás­zló Tóth, a renowned, Jew­ish archi­tect, who arrives in Amer­i­ca from Europe in the imme­di­ate after­math of the II WW. His mod­ernist ways and Jew­ish her­itage mark him out as oth­er, and his life as an out­sider there proves to be ever more suffocating.

All of which is giv­en gen­uine grandeur, and we’re pre­sent­ed with a visu­al and son­ic splen­dour that sweeps us along. But it’s as we move into its sec­ond half that the film comes to slow­ly unrav­el in terms of its story. 

At around the 3 hour mark, so fair­ly ear­ly in that sec­ond half – and yes, we’re tak­ing about yet anoth­er near 4 hour film, made all the longer by its extrav­a­gant and whol­ly unnec­es­sary 15 minute inter­mis­sion), one of the three pro­tag­o­nists does some­thing. And it’s that event that comes to define and deter­mine the three of their lives.

Adrien Brody and Guy Pearse, both of whom are par­tic­u­lar­ly impressive.

There are two seri­ous prob­lems with this. First, none of the char­ac­ters give any sug­ges­tion that the event in ques­tion is as life-chang­ing as it turns out to have been. It’s lit­er­al­ly not men­tioned, by any­one, until the very last few minutes. 

Sec­ond, and more damn­ing­ly, what the char­ac­ter does comes com­plete­ly out of the blue. Noth­ing up until that point, that is to say, for the last 15 years of their lives, gives any sug­ges­tion that that is in fact how he feels. On the con­trary, every­thing we’ve seen clear­ly demon­strates the exact opposite.

It feels like you’re watch­ing an adap­ta­tion of a real­ly long nov­el where the scriptwrit­ers were forced to delete three or four chap­ters from their screen­play, only to dis­cov­er that those chap­ters are pre­cise­ly the ones that reveal and explain the main char­ac­ters’ moti­va­tions. And with­out which, the sto­ry makes no sense.

But it’s not an adap­ta­tion, it’s an orig­i­nal screen­play, and was writ­ten by the film mak­er duo of Brady Cor­bet and his wife, Mona Fastvold. And it’s fair­ly clear where the prob­lem lies.

Giv­en his and her pre­vi­ous two films as a direc­tor writer pair, The Child­hood of a Leader (2015) and Vox Lux (2018), they are both direc­tor writ­ers, rather than writer direc­tors. Which is, alas, a fair­ly com­mon phe­nom­e­non in the film mak­ing world. 

The scenes they write are first and fore­most an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the direc­tor to flex his cre­ative mus­cles, instead of exist­ing for the pri­ma­ry func­tion of pro­pelling the sto­ry inex­orably forward. 

So an enor­mous amount of effort is invest­ed in impres­sive cast­ing, the bril­liant use of care­ful­ly scout­ed loca­tions, exten­sive­ly researched cos­tumes, impec­ca­ble art direc­tion, pristine­ly chore­o­graphed cin­e­matog­ra­phy and a mon­u­men­tal sound design. With, inevitably, very lit­tle time invest­ed pure­ly and sole­ly in story.

The first half real­ly is a spec­ta­cle to behold and hear. It feels like one of those sprawl­ing, epic David Lean films of yore, where big if bold­ly delin­eat­ed ideas are giv­en an inter­na­tion­al back­drop – no won­der Hol­ly­wood has been so blind­ly smitten. 

But unless they can wean them­selves off of mere spec­ta­cle to focus on the emo­tion­al depth a prop­er­ly told sto­ry can gen­er­ate, all they’ll ever be is mere Hol­ly­wood film mak­ers. They’ll have to leave art to the Europe where peo­ple like Lás­zló Tóth arrived from. 

Watch the trail­er for The Bru­tal­ist here:

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HBO’s “Fantasmas” from Julio Torres

The best way to enjoy Fan­tas­mas is by know­ing as lit­tle about it before­hand as pos­si­ble. For­tu­nate­ly it’s well nigh impos­si­ble to sumarise so noth­ing you’ll read here will in any way spoil your expe­ri­ence of watch­ing it. 

Osten­si­bly, we’re in a dystopi­an future where every­thing we over 30 something’s had feared has appar­ent­ly come to pass. Every­thing you do is done via your mobile and every­one leads lone­ly lives lived in con­junc­tion with their robot friend come but­ler in exis­ten­tial isolation. 

This is the vista that for­mer Sat­ur­day Night Live per­former Julio Tor­res presents us with as we fol­low what seems to be a video diary of what has become his life. 

He’s an out of work actor slash etc with a per­son­al man­ag­er who is actu­al­ly just role play­ing as his man­ag­er, but is it doing it so con­vinc­ing­ly that she seems to believe that she real­ly is his man­ag­er, and she spends her days try­ing to con­vince him to shell his soul so that he can final­ly afford to pay the rent. 

But the key to life in this world is your Proof of Exis­tence stamp, and he’s res­olute­ly deter­mined not to cave in to the man and get one, so that he can par­take in all of the activ­i­ties that are expect­ed of you here.

It’s both a cel­e­bra­tion of and a pas­tiche of a Gen Z world times a hun­dred that’s only loose­ly con­nect­ed by this nar­ra­tive, and is real­ly just a suc­ces­sion of bril­liant­ly realised skits per­formed by a hand­ful of celebri­ty actors, who are all clear­ly in on the joke, includ­ing Steve Busce­mi, Amy Sedaris, Paul Dano, Emma Stone (who also pro­duces, again, as she did on The Curse, mak­ing her as impres­sive a pro­duc­er as she is an actress) and Natasha Lyonne.

This is the most refresh­ing­ly orig­i­nal and con­sis­tent­ly daz­zling show on tele­vi­sion, and feels like the brighter and slight­ly lighter com­pan­ion piece to Apple’s Sev­er­ance. But looks can be deceiv­ing. Fan­tas­mas is a close as you’re going to get to a show that’s gen­uine­ly Beck­et­t­ian. Enjoy. 

Watch the trail­er for Fan­tas­mas here:

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