Viewing entries tagged
The Card Counter
I’ve been doing this for seven years, but still, each and every time I sit down in front of the keyboard to wrestle with my thoughts and feelings on a movie, it’s a challenge. I’m pouring everything I have into it, each and every time. Sometimes the results are fruitful. Sometimes I walk away thinking I never really got to the heart of what I wanted to explore. I think that means it’s working.
The late-career renaissance that Paul Schrader started with his 2018 film First Reformed continues with his new picture, The Card Counter. The two movies have quite a bit in common; they work well as companion pieces. Both feature sparse storytelling techniques. While First Reformed is a purer example of slow cinema, The Card Counter certainly fits the transcendental filmmaking mold.
Schrader has a decades-long career obsession with examining psychologically broken protagonists seeking redemption and absolution. Both First Reformed and The Card Counter tackle systemic failures of society as a way into their main characters’ psyches. In First Reformed, it was climate change. In The Card Counter, it’s the United States government and military’s unconscionable orchestration of torture in the so-called “war on terror” of the Bush years.
