Paul Schraderis a writer and director with a penchant for controversial subject matter and brutal narratives. He began his career as a film scholar and then screenwriter, before transitioning to directing in the late 1970s. His movies often feature overt religious ideas and iconography, reflecting his personal life (Schrader had a religious upbringing and attended a Christian college before switching to film studies). As a result, the central themes in his work tend to be self-destruction and the possibility of redemption.
Specifically, he has a passion for complex characters grappling with difficult situations. “I’m interested in the compromises one makes after one becomes an adult, when one realizes the nature of life,“he explains. His films are certainly full of compromise, with characters navigating the thorniest issues of deception, death, sex, love, and fate. His most famous works as a writer are the gritty cult thrillerRolling Thunderand his four collaborations withMartin Scorsese:Taxi Driver,Raging Bull,The Last Temptation of Christ, andBringing Out the Dead.As a director, his most accomplished moviesareMishima: A Life in Four ChaptersandFirst Reformed. These are Schrader’s most well-written projects, ranked.
10’Master Gardener'
Released: 2022
“Gardening is a belief in the future. A belief that things will happen according to plan.“Joel Edgertondelivers one of his finest performances here as Narvel Roth, the head gardener at a gorgeous estate. He spends his days taking painstaking care of the plants and writing extensive entries in his journal. His existence appears tranquil, but he is haunted by a dark past. In a past life, he was part of a white supremacist gang whom he snitched on. Now, he lives in witness protection, but danger always hovers over him.
His life is shaken up when he is ordered to take Maya (Quintessa Swindell), the grandniece of his employer Norma (Sigourney Weaver) under his wing. He shows her the ropes of horticulture and learns about her troubled personal life. They strike up a connection, and Roth is dragged into her drama with her violent drug dealer, R.G. (Jared Banken). This is all quintessential Schrader, exploring second chances and the possibility of truly turning one’s life around. Brilliantly restrained performances and lean but beautiful cinematography hold everything together, making for yet another late-career gem from the writer-director.
Master Gardener
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9’The Card Counter'
Released: 2021
“The feeling of being forgiven by another and forgiving oneself are so much alike, there’s no point in trying to keep them distinct.” William Tell (Oscar Isaac) is a former military interrogator turned professional gambler. He keeps his head down and avoids attention, betting small and ensuring that his wins never arouse suspicion. However, his careful plans are disrupted by the appearance of a young man named Cirk (Tye Sheridan), who shares a connection to Tell’s past.
Cirk knows who Tell really is and what he did during his time at Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison. Cirk’s father was also in the prison but was dishonorably discharged and his life ruined as a result of the abuses. However, Cirk believes that the man who was truly responsible for the torture got away scot-free. Now, he wants revenge and he wants Tell’s help in doing it. Our protagonist is placed in a conundrum, which could either clear his conscience or derail his life.
The Card Counter
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8’Cat People'
Released: 1982
“I like the dark. It’s friendly.“This intriguing horror, a remake of a 1940s film, centers on Irena Gallier (Nastassja Kinski), who discovers her family’s dark secret: they are descendants of a race of shapeshifting cat people. Mating with a human transforms a werecat into a black panther. The only way to regain human form is by killing another person. As Irena grapples with her newfound identity and the primal urges it entails, she must also fend off the twisted sexual advances of her sociopathic brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell).
A love triangle involving zoologist Oliver Yates (John Heard) soon forms, and bloodshed is never far away. The result is probably Schrader’s most out-there movie, a fusion of fantasy and realism, relationship study and supernatural horror. Somehow, he pulls off this delicate balancing act, making for a film that is both thoughtful and pretty darn entertaining. Plus, the killer theme music byDavid Bowieis epic. It was actually reused byQuentin Tarantinoduring a pivotal scene inInglourious Basterds.
Rent on Amazon
Released: 1999
“Saving someone’s life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world.” Martin Scorsese directed this psychological drama starringNicolas Cageas Frank Pierce, a burnt-out ambulance driver tormented by the ghosts of those he couldn’t save. We follow him through the dark city as he is called out to awful incidents like shootings and overdoses. He is soon paired with a highly religious paramedic named Marcus (Ving Rhames) and becomes obsessed with the idea of saving a young woman named Mary (Patricia Arquette).
The film was a rare box office bomb for Scorsese, grossing just $16.8m against a $32m budget, yet both he and editorThelma Schoonmakerhave praised it. Marty described it as one of his more personal projects,saying, “I had 10 years of ambulances. My parents, in and out of hospitals. Calls in the middle of the night. I was exorcising all of that.” Cage also adores the film. “I have to say that might be the best movie I ever made,“he has said.
6’Hardcore'
Released: 1979
Schrader’ssophomore directorial effortplunges viewers into the seedy underbelly of the adult entertainment industry. The plot revolves around Jake (George C. Scott), a father looking for his daughter Kristen (Ilah Davis), who has gone missing. A private detective finds a pornographic film featuring Kirsten, sending Jake on a crusade to rescue her. The conservative, straight-laced Jake masquerades as a porn producer and begins trawling the streets of Los Angeles. This odyssey shows Jake aspects of society that he had previously kept far from his mind. It’s the kind of bleak sojourn that can’t help but change anyone who undertakes it.
Intriguingly, Schraderhas saidthatHardcorewas inspired by the classicJohn WayneWesternThe Searchers, also about a parent looking for a child, but relocates the narrative to a very different setting. This is challenging material, but Scott more than rises to the occasion. “So much of this film is just a slow burn,” Schrader hassaidof the movie. “The fun of putting [Scott] in these environments and just watching his reactions.”
5’First Reformed'
Released: 2017
“Courage is the solution to despair, reason provides no answers.“Ethan Hawkestars in this introspective drama as Reverend Ernst Toller, a pastor at a small church in upstate New York who is struggling with his faith and inner demons. He prays and ruminates on his woes, but this seems to offer him no relief. At the same time, Toller becomes increasingly drawn into the world of environmental activism by a young parishioner (Amanda Seyfried), whose husband’s (Philip Ettinger) radical beliefs lead to tragic consequences.
First Reformedis a deeply bitter film, with an unforgiving perspective on modern life. Nevertheless, it’s also moving, and there are glimmers of light amidst the gloom.As Schrader explains: “You live in a world where you have to choose hope because despair is too great.” As a result, this may be Schrader’s most piercing depiction of a crisis of faith. The script engages with truly deep ideas while retaining the exploitation edge of Schrader’s earlier work.
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4’Blue Collar'
Released: 1978
“Everything they do is to keep us in our place.” Schrader stepped into the director’s chair withthis portrait of working-class life in America. Set in Detroit,Blue Collarfollows three auto factory workers—played byRichard Pryor,Harvey Keitel, andYaphet Kotto—as they struggle to make ends meet while enduring exploitation at the hands of their employers and union leaders.
Frustrated by their stagnant wages and lack of opportunities, the men hatch a risky plan to rob their union’s office, hoping to secure a better future for themselves and their families. However, their scheme quickly unravels, leading to a series of betrayals and moral compromises. In particular, they find the safe contains evidence of the union’s corruption, which places them in a different kind of volatile situation. The movie had a notoriously difficult production process -Schrader claimedto come close to a nervous breakdown on set - but it turned out well, and remains a bracing commentary on greed and economic inequality.
3’Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters'
Released: 1985
“I wanted to explode, light the sky for an instant and disappear.“Mishima: A Life in Four Chaptersis a biopic about Japanese writerYukio Mishima. It comprises four distinct chapters, each representing a different aspect of Mishima’s complex personality: his early life, his rise to fame as a prolific writer, his fervent nationalist beliefs, and his dramatic final moments. He lived through a time of great upheaval in Japan, especially World War II and its aftermath, so he became a kind of stand-in for a certain segment of society.
Mishima lamented the changes to his homeland in the wake of the war, viewing them as a kind of cultural suicide. He grew increasingly unstable over time, eventually attempting to hold a military official hostage to make a point. He was a controversial and complicated figure, and this towering film does more than his story justice.The narrative is told with an unconventional structure, complemented byPhilip Glass’s stirring score.
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
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2’Rolling Thunder'
Released: 1977
“That’s how you beat people who torture you. You learn to love ‘em.“Rolling Thunderis a revenge thriller about Major Charles Rane (William Devane), a Vietnam vet returning home to a fractured life after spending years as a prisoner of war. While attempting to readjust to civilian life, Rane’s world is shattered once more when a group of criminals brutally murders his family and leaves him for dead. Surviving the ordeal, Rane embarks on a relentless quest for vengeance, teaming up with another war buddy (Tommy Lee Jones) to track down those responsible and mete out justice.
The film serves up one tense set piece after another, as the violence steadily escalates and the body count rises. It all culminates in a suitably bloody finale. The carnage shocked some viewers on release, but there’s no denying its potency. As directorJohn Flynnsaid: “We knew we were doing something fairly bold.” Intriguingly,Schrader has saidthat Tarantino will re-imagine clips fromRolling Thunderin his upcoming film, tentatively titledThe Movie Critic.
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1’Taxi Driver’
Released:1976
“You talkin' to me?” Schrader’s finest screenplay remains the Palme d’Or-winning Taxi Driver, both his and Scorsese’s most harrowing character study.Robert De Niroturns in one of his most iconic performancesas Travis Bickle, a Vietnam War veteran who drives a taxi through the city’s mean streets during the graveyard shift. Disillusioned by the rampant corruption and depravity he witnesses every night, Travis grows more and more disconnected from society.
As his sense of alienation deepens, Travis descends into a dangerous spiral of paranoia and obsession, fixating on the idea of cleaning up the city by any means necessary. In the process, his case study becomes a commentary on the dark side of the American psyche during the 1970s. “Travis’s problem is the same as the existential hero’s, that is, should I exist?” Schraderhas said. “But Travis doesn’t understand that this is his problem, so he focuses it elsewhere: and I think that is a mark of the immaturity and the youngness of our country.”
