A lonely anti-hero who drags his scars in a climate of deaf violence: 45 years after writing Taxi Driver, New Hollywood masterpiece, Paul Schrader continues his journey alongside the ghosts of America with The Card Counter, Wednesday December 29 at the cinema.
Faithful traveling companion of Martin Scorsese, for whom he also wrote Raging bull Where The last temptation of Christ, the 75-year-old filmmaker has also made his way as a director. His Card Counter, which was in competition at the last Venice Film Festival, is bathed in darkness: it tells the story of an Iraq veteran, haunted by the tortures in which he took part in the military prison of Abu Ghraib.
“Society forgave him, but he didn’t forgive himself“said the filmmaker at a press conference in Venice, captivated by”the lack of a sense of responsibility in contemporary societies“.
As Travis Bickle (Robert de Niro) drifted in his taxi through the night of New York, William Tell (Oscar Isaac) is an unattached man, who crisscrosses the United States from casino to casino, playing poker tournaments. professional.
The character is solitary, stingy with his words, and cultivates strange rituals, for example wrapping in white sheets the furniture of the motel rooms that he occupies. A main role that Schrader entrusts to Oscar Isaac, revealed in the Cohen brothers (Inside Llewyn Davis) and also known for Star Wars.
“All the characters I have played have their weirdness, but William is probably the most mysterious, the most difficult to pin down.“Said the magnetically charming actor in Venice.”I have read, reread and reread“the scenario before understanding that the”key“was to capture”how the body remembers trauma“He explained that he worked on body language, like a poker player who doesn’t let anything show through his face.
The film is also the story of a surrogate family, the one that William will eventually form with other injured characters: Cirk (Tye Sheridan), a young man whose father, a soldier, committed suicide, and who seems to be looking for a father figure, and La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), an unlikely agent of professional poker players.
Will William eventually believe in redemption? Nothing is less certain, so much violence threatens while the crimes of the past continue to haunt him.