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:

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right or below, and I shall keep you post­ed every month on All the very Best and Worst in film, tele­vi­sion and music!