When the subject of your film is the darkness of a man’s tortured would, tortured in many different ways as we come to learn, one might naturally think that you’re in for some rather serious fare. With the works of aueter Paul Schrader you would be right. But with the best of the work of Schrader, or for instance his frequent collaborator and producing partner Martin Scorsese, these films repeatedly reveal themselves to be some of the more rewatchable and complex beasts of their years. The Card Counter, written and directed by Schrader, produced again by Scorsese is another such film that offers us through a deeply disturbed character study many elements of our current America that historically and socially we may choose to ignore, making us face them in the garish and grotesque light here of America’s most commercial gambling casinos.
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Alexander Dynan shot this film beautifully I must start with, under bright fluorescents that make the film at first look digital and glossy, but over time grow sickening even, all to perfectly give us the atmosphere of the casinos that we spent most of our time during this film. With Dynan’s great work Schrader is able to build from the ground up a film that feels overly clinical in many different ways, before dynamically pulling the rug from us, delving us into the unnatural ugliness’s of our time. The film also manages to blend this air of the ugly and clinical with both the bizarrely beautiful musical score of Giancarlo Vulcano, repeatedly introducing elements of breathing into his score that unnerve and unsettle a viewer but also weirdly relax us, or at least lull us into a plainly uneasy sensibility. All of these elements are in Schrader’s arsenal as he creates the world that we inhabit for the course of the film. Schrader himself here has the steadied hand of a master craftsman delivering excellence once more, a critic with an element of Schrader disliking may comment that this feels like a retread of a retread of previous material from Schrader, which ultimately of course in the sense of the articulate, depressed and stoic disturbed professional is entirely true. But where does one draw the line for an auteur between ‘retread’ and ‘motif’ and all the positive synonyms that go with it? For me this is a very similar case weirdly enough to Goodfellas and Casino. Whereas on surface level this may just feel like First Reformed or Light Sleeper in a casino, much like at the time for some Casino just felt like Goodfellas in a casino – when these worlds are so wholly different the differences flow from the head to the toe and inform the whole film. At a glance they are the same film in a different setting, but when that setting is so engrained into the character study of the film and that casino setting is at times even the least interesting element of Schrader’s journey he’s taking us on, how can one not look at the films as wholly separate beings? I certainly see them that way and found The Card Counter to be an intriguing and original entry into Schrader’s cannon of films.
Of course every character study needs it’s lead actor and Schrader gets his here with Oscar Isaac, more than an on top form here himself in a role that perfectly balances his immense and total charisma with an impenetrable darkness, conveyed repeatedly through longing and complex emotionality. Isaac isn’t the sole reason the film works, but he certainly is one of the things that make it work so well. Tye Sheridan enters early in the film as a rough and complex figure who Isaac takes under his wing, Sheridan’s Cirk (‘with a C’) is one of the more interesting characters in the film with an acute and messy air of trauma about him fuelled by an almost Hollywood revenge fantasy that Schrader presents for us in a world of brutal realism. Willem Dafoe is the focus of this terrifying fantasy and with only a few scenes manages to give us another horrifying clinical figure who deals with the most in-human and horrific things as if they were merely a job, of course for him they are and for Isaac in a period before the film is set they were too. Overall the clashing of these characters leads the film down its dark path, with Tiffany Haddish appearing also as the third element of Isaac’s William Tell’s life, as a possible business associate and also possible love interest. There is no new ground being broke with this love story, however the chemistry is there and it works as well as any other film. But it’s the introduction of this element into a film so otherwise without hope that makes overall The Card Counter the daring beast that it is.
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A top form 8/10 entry into the cannon of Schrader’s recent resurgence, returning to the dark and effective thrillers of his hey-day as a writer and director auteur. Bolstered by Oscar Isaac’s incredible lead performance, Schrader with this film balances a tale of incredible hardship and psychological turmoil with an intentionally deeply clinical tale of casino grifter’s. Yes, it’s another character study examining the deep darkness of a very specific, very stoic and very talented man’s life and soul – but when they are this consistently good and have been (with the rare miss) for the past forty years, who would complain?
P.S. A seminar can be a very boring thing, but I genuinely would watch an hour of un-edited B-roll from Willem Dafoe’s security services seminar about the nature of the torture industry.
P.P.S On the other side the heavy metal needle drop and the distorted fish-eye lens one shot first glance of the prison is one of the harshest, bluntest, ugliest and most powerful moments of cinema that I never wish to see again. However now I will for this is another entry in the long list of deeply dark movies that I know will watch over and over again across the years.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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