The Card Counter review - Bet on Oscar Isaac
“Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood.”
Director Paul Schrader is no stranger to film noir or to damaged loners, and yet whilst he has mined this type of material many times before, in Oscar Isaac he has found a special conduit through which to channel his dark sensibilities. For The Card Counter, there is something of Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money here, the story of a broken character finding redemption in the form of young surrogate son.
Oscar Isaac shines darkly as William “Tell” Tillich, a ex-con now free from an 8 year stint in military prison Leavenworth. He counts cards to make his living, but ensures he never wins enough to draw attention to himself. If reading Ben Mezrich’s Bringing Down The House taught us anything, it’s that card counting can be a dangerous profession, for if you win too much, you draw enough heat for Casinos to blacklist you. To avoid this Tillich is obsessive about deflecting attention. He is quiet, unassuming, only plays Blackjack in small doses and deliberately restricts his winnings to the hundreds of dollars in order to blend into the background. Paul Schrader gleefully portrays the eccentricities of such a low-key life – Tillich covers all the furniture in his hotel room with sheets and rope, in what seems to be an effort to further erase his existence from the world around him.
Like much of Schrader’s lonely leading men, Tellich is a man terrified of intimacy.
After a brief explanation of card counting, the film takes an unexpected and necessary turn. Whilst walking around a casino, Tellich stumbles into a security industry convention, particularly to a seminar chaired by a retired Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe), whose little seen shadowy presence looms over the movie, revealing more to us on the backstory of Tillich himself. Attending the seminar is young Cirk (Tye Sheridan), a sheepish weakling who has plans to seek revenge against Gordo, but he needs help from an experienced man like Tillich, who tentatively begins to build human connection by taking the unemployed Cirk under his wing.
Like much of Schrader’s lonely leading men, Tellich is a man terrified of intimacy. The damage that caused this trait is revealed in flashbacks to Abu Ghraib, whose horrific events have torn away his innocence. But for Tellich, Cirk is an opportunity for human connection and redemption, and the film allows it’s cold characters to very slowly warm into becoming a likeable surrogate family, completed by the bubbly card backer La Linda (Tiffany Haddish).
You would expect such a movie called The Card Counter to revel in the tension of playing Blackjack, but really playing cards in The Card Counter is as important as taxis where in Taxi Driver. Instead the priority is character. Here we study another man alone in a room surrounded by the mess of the world he created for himself. The tension comes from the question of whether or not he can redeem his sins. Whilst the film suitably mines the dark themes of torture, isolation, and revenge, whats keeps you going is the clear connection between people attempting to help each other.
Like a more focused Terence Mallick, Schrader’s latest proves he’s still burning with the need to not compromise his work for modern expectations.
One of the great joys of his Schrader’s best work is the quiet darkness behind the eyes of his characters who don’t talk too much. Much of modern cinema is spent on lore-heavy exposition that what is often forgotten is the quiet moments that allow an audience to collect their thoughts on the events they are witnessing. What makes Schrader’s patient style of film making so difficult to create is he must present a story fascinating enough to hold your interest even when its not thundering forward into the next scene, which brings me to the The Card Counter’s secret weapon, Oscar Isaac.
For so much of the film we are trapped with only the pain in Isaac’s eyes to keep us rapt, and he is wholly convincing. Any film that relies so heavily on the silent face of its lead to provide emotion owes a tremendous dept to the natural charisma of the actor, and even in his sullen, cold characteristics, Isaac is remarkable. You could watch him read out a shopping list. Schrader’s made many movies about men alone in rooms, but Isaac’s talent keeps the recurring themes fresh.
Schrader (a Catholic) has always keenly embraced the spiritual space of his work, and wrote about it notably in Transcendental Style in Film. Like a more focused Terence Mallick, Schrader’s latest proves he’s still burning with the need to not compromise his work for modern expectations. He still cares just as much about the quiet between the dialogue as he does the dialogue itself. We owe him thanks for his creative restraint, for holding steadfast on the smouldering eyes of his captivating lead and reminding us there can be so much complexity in the stillness of late night brooding. Somewhere in the background, the ugly face of American foreign policy is smiling at us, and yet Schrader still has the disciple to let us work out the reasons for ourselves.
