Review of Master Gardener (2023) by Mauro_Lanari — 11 Jul 2023

(Mauro Lanari).

Once upon a time there was the "New Hollywood" and Schrader was one of its greatest exponents. An almost obligatory theme for that progeny of filmmakers: the eventual possibility of redemption. Nothing to say about the director's stainless mastery also attested in this film by the sagacious metaphors related to horticulture and "formal", "informal", "wild" gardens; the problem is that he and his peers have shown themselves incapable of keeping up to date on the very topic they had at heart: soteriology. Still thinking of salvation as a second chance or, this time, as a third, means having conceptually stopped at a few decades ago. There is no escape along that road, that way has no exit and the epilogue is even more a false happy ending.