The Card Counter
Oscar Isaac excels as a card shark in Paul Schrader’s pitch-perfect crime noir thriller.
Some twenty years ago Paul Schrader was a revered figure amongst those who take cinema seriously. His prestige as a screenwriter had reached a new high with Taxi Driver (1976) and two years later he branched out as a director making an effective debut with Blue Collar which would soon lead to further success with such films as American Gigolo. However, his work in the 21st-century has been erratic to a degree although it did lead to much critical acclaim for 2017’s First Reformed. Personally I found that film overpraised and decidedly overshadowed by the work that inspired it, Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece Winter Light (1962).
However, even if it proves to be less than perfect, I do believe that for much of its length The Card Counter finds Schrader at the very top of his form. As regards the first half of the film, I have no reservations at all and in a cast that has no weak link Oscar Isaac, a very talented actor, gives his best performance to date. He plays a former soldier, William Tillich, who has made a way of life for himself by travelling around casinos in America and living on the profits from that. He has adopted the name of William Tell and has become a loner who is an expert in the world of blackjack. Tell introduces the film in voice-over so we quickly learn that his resourcefulness in the game stems from a spell of over eight years in Leavenworth prison. While there as a prisoner he had read up on philosophy and taught himself all that was needed to make money at the tables including the inherent wisdom of playing regularly for medium stakes rather than aiming at the big money.
We learn all that from Tell himself and Schrader’s screenplay has immense confidence in portraying the world of casino gambling and in conveying Tell’s authoritative understanding of the game and how to play it. We are also made aware through perfectly placed and suitably powerful flashbacks that the jail sentence came out of Tell’s involvement in the torture of prisoners in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison which, when uncovered, had led to his court-martial. But, although Tell had been a soldier acting under orders, the man who had forced him into accepting these duties, Major Gordo (Willem Dafoe), had got away scot-free. Back in society, Tell has created a detached, enigmatic persona for himself and Isaac brilliantly conveys a man who seeks to reveal nothing of himself but who is nevertheless seen by us as somebody who through self-disgust has retreated into an existence so withdrawn that it cuts him off from all meaningful human contact.
The Card Counter is pitch perfect in the way that it sets up this portrait of the man that William Tillich has become. What follows is a portrayal of how two people break through Tell’s reserve in ways that may change his future path. One of these is La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), an agent who helps gamblers in exchange for a share in their profits, and the other is a young man named Cirk (Tye Sheridan). These two ultimately bring human connections back into Tell’s life so it is ironic that Cirk’s motive in seeking out Tell is due to his own father having been another victim of Gordo's actions and that what he has in mind is to make Tell a companion in executing his plan to revenge himself bloodily on Gordo. These developments fuel a narrative that is enriched by concerns present beneath the surface. Just as Tell counts the cards as a reliable way of assessing where he stands during every game, he also believes that people are shaped inevitably by all of their past actions. However, we are invited to ponder whether or not a man’s direction can be changed and, if it can, what it might take in a case like Tell’s to lead to redemption. Yet another question here is whether truly bad acts call for vengeance or should instead be allowed to fade from memory other than as a warning against comparable behaviour.
The first half of The Card Counter is so confident that everything in it feels inevitable and right, but then unexpectedly inappropriate touches of stylisation start to appear. The one that feels the most disruptive when it happens is a scene which finds Tell walking at night with La Linda and which indicates that she is somebody in whom he might be able to confide. Schrader allows this to play out in colourful images that are at once totally unrealistic and an obtrusive director’s conceit. But even more serious in the long run is the decision to allow songs to be heard on the soundtrack. Very gradually they are made increasingly prominent and this leads to a final scene in which a song accompaniment is a vital component. Earlier Schrader has brought the potential violence in the story to a climax in a scene which, if not wholly persuasive as a resolution, is tellingly directed in a way that could be a homage to a famous scene in one of Hitchcock's last films. But, if Schrader can be appreciative of Hitchcock, he is even better known as an admirer of the films of Robert Bresson. Indeed, his American Gigolo deliberately echoed Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959) and now he chooses to do that again in this film’s final scene. And that is where Schrader’s use of the song over the long-held last shot seems to convert the sublimity of Bresson into something which by comparison feels utterly bathetic. That could be considered a reaction that stems from personal taste and inevitably many who see The Card Counter will not be familiar with Pickpocket. In any case whether or not you feel ultimately let down by The Card Counter, much of it is of the highest quality and the performances never falter.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan, Willem Dafoe, Alexander Babara, Bobby C. King, Ekaterina Baker, Bryan Truong, Dylan Flashner, Adrienne Lau, Joel Michaely.
Dir Paul Schrader, Pro Lauren Mann, Brixton Pope and David M. Wulf, Screenplay Paul Schrader, Ph Alexander Dynan, Pro Des Ashley Fenton, Ed Benjamin Rodriguez, Music Robert Levon Been and Giancarlo Vulcano, Costumes Lisa Madonna.
Focus Features/Bona Film Group/HanWay Films/Convergent Media-Universal Pictures.
111 mins. USA/Sweden/UK. 2021. US Rel: 10 September 2021. UK Rel: 5 November 2021. Cert. 15.
