Master Gardener

Venice Film Festival #12 – PalaBiennale

This film hinges on one of my biggest gripes in cinema, having a relationship at its core that has virtually no development. The film asks you to believe in this odd relationship that’s built, but it doesn’t seem interested in showing why it exists more just informing you that it does. This is a problem as it makes no sense why this relationship occurs, as it’s between a former reformed Nazi and a young woman. The film screams that it was written by a man since all of a sudden the woman doesn’t matter who he was and just wants to have sex with him. It was so jarring I ended up laughing in the cinema. Having this relationship be the basis of the film just makes it collapse in on itself.

The writing as a whole is not only disappointing but genuinely atrocious at some points. The dialogue between the two seems forced and contrived, and when it comes to the woman she’s written with virtually no autonomy or agency, and not in an interesting storytelling way where the film explains why she is like this, this is in a way that uses woman as plot devices. The film is about a man’s redemption arc and finding happiness despite his dark past, but for that to come at the expense of giving the woman any semblance of decision making is laughable.

The film is missing a driving force too, why does this man suddenly fall in love with this woman? What motivated him to reforming? The film opts to avoid these questions in the hopes that you won’t notice. Yet when the core of the story is so false and unbelievable and the film doesn’t want to explore any of these other narrative threads, it creates an air of indifference to the film.

What’s trying to come across on screen is this symbiotic relationship between the beauty of nature and violence but sadly this idea isn’t as striking as the film wants it to be. For being a film centred around gardening there’s never a real sense of how beautiful the main character finds the art. In contrast the violence just feels completely out of place and as the film does a bad job setting up its characters, it doesn’t feel as impactful as the film doesn’t convey how much of a change this is for the reformed man.

Some good performances though, despite some atrocious dialogue, and a mesmerising score. But a lacklustre screenplay and flat and lifeless technical elements leave this feeling like a garden that hasn’t been tended to with love and more like a few flowers that Schrader says is one