Spending Time with Paul Schraders' 'Men in a Room'

Paul Schrader is a titan of American film history if only for his screenplay for the Martin Scorsese directed Taxi Driver from 1976. But, at the age of 75, Schrader has done much more over the course of his decades-long career. He is most famous for his collaborations with Scorsese, including another 3 screenplays written for the director, and while less well-known than his legendary colleague, he is a respected and lauded director in his own right, as well as an encyclopedic film historian, critic, and enthusiast. Many directors revisit themes and obsessions over and over again throughout their filmographies, but few of them have made films with such striking similarities as Schrader. Fascinatingly, his protagonists from Taxi Driver, American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, First Reformed, and The Card Counter are all loosely diverse representations of the same character type. The now monumental cultural figure of Robert De Niro’s superbly portrayed Travis Bickle, one of the most iconic characters ever brought to life on the silver screen, not only haunts the memories of viewers of Scorsese’s masterpiece, but is also clearly a character that Schrader cannot get out of his head.

These existential loners, outsiders in an ugly, rotten, corrupt world that makes no sense, these men whose social behavior and lifestyles are shocking to any ‘average,’ ‘normal,’ ‘civilized’ adult are often portrayed not only in a sympathetic light, but with a saintlike grace. They are the isolated men who see the world for what it is and cannot look the other way as easily as most of us can. De Niro’s cab driver, Richard Geer’s prostitute, Willem Dafoe’s drug dealer, Ethan Hawke’s preacher, and Oscar Isaac’s gambler are men who have been molded by our cruel and unfair world, and yet, despite their flaws, their sins, their dark minds, and the decrepit, occult places they inhabit, they are honest, well intentioned, and good. Their lives may have been perverted by the unlucky hand dealt to them, but their souls resist. They are people who are almost invisible to the passerby, yet not because they are not there, but because a part of us does not want to see them or see what they see.

His plots have come to be known as ‘man in a room’ films, a fitting description as nearly all of them feature narration from their protagonist writing, oftentimes in their underwear, alone in a sad, barren room. They transcribe the events that transpired over the past days, and their thoughts and philosophy on life in general. 

An avant lover of the films of Ozu, Dreyer, and especially Bresson, Schrader is not afraid of blindly stealing ideas from his idols. The final scene in Bresson’s Pickpocket is a special obsession of his as we see it replicated not once, not twice, but three times in American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, and yet again in his most recent release, The Card Counter. From prison, Geer, Dafoe, and Isaac all receive a seemingly immaculate gesture from their girl on the outside, respectively represented by Lauren Hutton, Susan Sarandon, and Tiffany Haddish. The women reach their hands out, and the men, sometimes separated by a glass wall, other times not, place their heads or hands out to meet them, sometimes remaining there timelessly even as the credits roll.

Schrader not only ties his characters together through his screenplays, but also visually. The sense of isolation and emptiness is aesthetically present in all his films due to his use of framing that places barriers such as pillars between his characters as he does in American Gigolo or a cafeteria scene in Light Sleeper where Schrader takes us behind a pillar to show its separation of Dafoe’s love sick dealer cut off from his once upon a time lover by a hideous white block. Other times he puts them off in a corner or in the background where they are almost swallowed up by all the open space. The hotel rooms stripped and covered in white bed sheets in The Card Counter is one of the most powerful examples that comes to mind.

The camera’s tracking movement also creates a sense of ghostly energy, as if our protagonists really were dead and are simply gliding through space, observing the disappointing reality of the promise of humankind. As it floats through the sleek, hip apartments and restaurants of American Gigolo, the trash ridden dark and dirty streets of New York in Light Sleeper, or the smoggy, discolored, blandness of the poker rooms in The Card Counter, one feels an overwhelming sense of desolation and despair.

1980 was a big year for Schrader as it featured both the release of another Scorsese masterpiece penned by the screenwriter, Raging Bull, and of his own directorial success, American Gigolo. While the sunny Californian location, elegant and luxurious interior settings, classy designer clothes, incredibly sexy performance by Geer, and poppy mainstream soundtrack featuring ‘Call Me’ by Blondie almost makes it sound like a Hollywood studio picture, Schrader takes us to a much more complicated, adult place. Geer became the first male star to give a performance with full frontal nudity in Hollywood, and the dark turns of the screenplay including a brutal murder and a slimy politician scared off Hollywood stars John Travolta and Meryl Streep. 

The tone of the film is mysterious and disturbing thanks to cinematography that flies over and across these posh, empty white apartments with a phantom-like crawl. And while it is wonderful to goggle at Geer’s naked body, finally showing us a man as sexualized as women have been since the birth of cinema, the idea of a prostitute who does his job to give pleasure to women who may have never experienced it sounds a bit too good to be true. The disconcerting, uncertain tone of the film is also brought to an overly melodramatic and violent conclusion that does not seem exactly fitting. Yet, despite its flaws, it is an interesting addition to the Travis Bickle-like character reincarnations.

The next Bickleish representation would be portrayed in 1992 by a less sexy Willem Dafoe, who's incredibly strange and expressive face and skeleton-like body make for a drastic change from that of pretty boy Geer’s perfection. The film takes place almost entirely at night, much like Taxi Driver, and the first time we even see Dafoe is no less than as a passenger in a for hire car. The first shot that opens the film is a fantastically mood setting tracking shot across a black blue cobblestone street. The camera, facing down, moves forward in the night taking us with it with a soundtrack by a droning, depressive Michael Been. We see piles and piles of black garbage bags bordering the streets and it almost looks as if we are in a post-apocalyptic world before Dafoe narrates to us the fact that there is a garbage strike on hand. 

Once again there is a mysterious murder of a young woman, and creepy characters surround our protagonist in a scummy world were Dafoe stands morally and intellectually above the rest. Susan Sarandon is absolutely stunning as the elegant member of drug management, and Dafoe’s unique face and emotional sincerity makes it hard to imagine anyone else playing the part. Though again, the bloodbath at the end of the film does not seem as convincing under Schrader as director as it was in the jaw dropping end of Taxi Driver.

Schrader’s career hit a low before he had a miraculous comeback in 2017 with First Reformed, surely his masterpiece as a director. Ethan Hawke, who plays a reverend in the titular, historical First Reformed church, also gives the best performance of his career. While there is certainly a similarity between the ending of this film and that of his Bresson inspired Pickpocket scene remakes, Schrader's real influence here was Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, being a loose, modern remake of the Swedish auteur’s austere classic. In Berman’s original Max Von Sydow plays a depressed, suicidal parishioner who turns to the bitter, cold, and repressed preacher played by Gunnar Björnstrand. This relationship is replicated here, and while Hawke is certainly disillusioned, his affable persona makes him a much warmer, if no less tragic presence. The remarkable Philip Ettinger takes on Von Sydow’s role as Michael, only instead of feeling a sense of doom and hopelessness because of the threat of nuclear war as was the case in the 1963 version, Michael feels completely helpless because of the impending catastrophes on the horizon due to climate change. Their long discussion is gripping. Michael’s completely understandable desperation as he presents his case against bringing a child into a world he witnesses destroying itself before his eyes despite obvious warning signs is a difficult argument for Hawke to go up against. In the end, it seems it is Hawke who is more and more convinced by his parishioner's opinions instead of the other way around. In both Berman’s and Schrader’s films the pastors are newly invigorated by the existential challenge presented to them by these men. Yet both are unsuccessful and their confessors end up committing suicide. This brings Hawke to become more and more distraught as the film goes on, and understandably so, as his past, his personal life, and the global events around him seem to offer little hope. It is a film of our times, and only seems to become more and more relevant as the world digs its own grave deeper and deeper due to inaction that, at some point, will be irreversible. 

The church, Hawke himself, and the planet at large are brilliantly tied together, each serving as an allegory for the other two parts. The current global state of things as described by Michael is clearly obvious to anyone who chooses to see what is in front of them. The church, a historic building, the oldest of its type in the area, is about to celebrate its 250th year anniversary. Yet it also is falling apart. Serving more as a tourist attraction, hardly anyone attends the masses, the organ does not work, there are leaks in the bathrooms, and even the tombstones are falling over. It is now owned by a hyper capitalist super church run by another pastor wonderfully played by comedian Cedric the Entertainer whose own building is covered in sticker words of verses of the bible strewn across the walls like slogans of Coca Cola or McDonalds. Finally we have the figure of Hawke himself, dapply darbed in an elegant black robe, he could be death himself. He has a drinking problem and it seems to be getting worse. He cannot urinate yet he refuses to go to the doctor. In one particularly effective scene he brushes his teeth only to discover his gums are bleeding profusely. He scowls in the bathroom mirror and turns the light off. In all three cases the damage seems to be dire and beyond repair. The climate is turning against us, the church is damaged and owned by big money, and Hawke is seriously ill. Though it may seem too late to fight, one needs to feel there is something to fight for, or the only answer is suicide. That hope is represented by Michael’s pregnant wife played by Amanda Seyfried who gives a very open, sympathetic, and emotional performance as the young beautiful widow with child who, perhaps foolishly, continues on nonetheless.

Schrader will visit recent American atrocities more directly in his next film, but here he also tackles the subject of the Iraq war. From a military family, Hawke convinces his son to enlist in the army who is subsequently sent off to Iraq and killed. The inability to face the fact that his son was encouraged by him to go off and fight in a war that had no moral basis and made no sense at all is the root for all of Hawke’s problems. Our blind love of country and patriotism will be the ruin of us all as shown later in the film by right wing extremist positions held by a young church goer and later by a powerful energy corporation owner who hypocritically refutes climate change while at the same time wrongly claims his company is environmentally friendly He also donates money to the church and therefore must be indulged to Hawke’s ire who rightly claims that the church got it wrong when it did not fearlessly support the science that proves climate change is real and we are instigating our own destruction. Tradition and patriotism stop making sense when everything they represent has become a lie. All we have to do is open our eyes.

First Reformed is also the most visually stunning of Schrader’s films. The color palette is as cold as its winter setting, and the framing which constantly disconnects our characters from each other, paired with perfect art direction and costuming drive home the sense of melancholy present in our protagonist’s subconscious. In one scene Schrader suddenly goes full on Tarkovsky with levitating bodies and starry and destopic backgrounds that suddenly break into the frame from beyond space and time. Watching First Reformed is an incredibly rich experience. It is a film so layered with symbology, philosophy, politics, and cinematic influences that it stands as one of the most essential films made in the past few years.

This year Schrader followed up the film that would give him his first Oscar nomination by returning to familiar ground with The Card Counter, where Oscar Isaac plays the titular character, an ex-convict who tries as hard as he can to live invisibly, checking into different hotels every night and only winning enough to make a living without attracting attention. We discover the root to his antisocial behavior through trippy flashbacks where we learn that he was one of the soldiers who committed heinous systematic torture at the Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq war. Once again Schrader shows how boldly and directly he is prepared to discuss the most unspeakable realities of current American history, depicting something unseen in popular culture and now almost completely forgotten. The Abu Ghraib controversy came to the attention of the American public in 2004 when 60 Minutes aired a program which featured interviews from ex detainees and photos of prisoners undergoing unthinkable humiliation and torture while United States troops smile and pose next to them as if they were having the time of their lives.

While it is a brave attempt by Schrader to bring this topic to the big screen, and his horrific interpretation of the prison is dizzying and unsettling, the film fails to adequately flesh out the extremely complicated ethical doubts and regrets and disturbed psychology of its protagonist. Yes, Isaac’s soldier was nothing more than a pawn forced by his commanding officers to commit brutally inhumane acts, but seeing him smiling in these horrifying photos makes him a character much less sympathetic than any of Schrader’s other existential lone wolves. 

In taking on this subject matter, Schrader goes down a rabbit hole that he does not quite know how to come out of. However, his attempt is more than commendable, and the film has many strong points including the moody soundtrack by Robert Levon Been, Light Sleeper’s Michael Been’s son, who clearly followed in his father’s footsteps with another brilliantly gloomy Schrader musical accompaniment. The supporting performances are also top notch, featuring Dafoe whose Major represents the superior officers (and even higher ups like Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush himself) who got off scott free while their troops were sent to prison for actions they trained them to commit, Tye Sheridan as a lost young man who Isaac takes under his wing, and Tiffany Haddish, one of the greatest comedians currently working, here going straight as a love interest and corporate gambling executive. And the film is of course brilliantly shot with cinematography that gives the seedy hotels and gambling rooms an air of silent, dead ambiance typical of Schrader.

The Card Counter has been another critical success for the writer / director, debuting at the Venice Film Festival, racking up awards and featuring in numerous top ten lists, and, with three films currently in production, two of them with him as director, Schrader shows no signs of slowing down. Do not be surprised if we see more revamps of his ‘man in a room’ protagonist in Schrader film’s to come, a character that may be repetitive, but who its creator constantly brings to life with new shades of depression and darkness and new opportunities for salvation.