The Card Counter

Defying All Expiations

or

God's Lonely Flagellant (You Want Hearts and Diamonds, But Get Clubs and Spades)

 

I take a journal to movies; I write notes in the dark while the film is playing, scribbling down some nice turn of dialog, diagramming a frame, noting performances and trying to suss out relationships, plot-lines and actors and sometimes highlighting possible "Don't Make a Scene" material (and there's a couple, one after the other, in this one). I usually spend a good hour after the movie trying to make head-way out of the indecipherable ink-spots I put on the page.

 

The thing is, it's one of those college ruled composition books, exactly like the one into which Oscar Isaac's character, William Tell, etches his thoughts in Paul Schrader's new film, The Card Counter. Having it under my arm as I was exiting the theater earned me a couple of worried looks from the other patrons and I wanted to say "nothing to see her, everyone go home, let the people do their work." I don't think it would have helped.

Because William Tell (real name Tillich) is another one of Schrader's existential loners, like Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle or American Gigolo's Julian Kay or Light Sleeper's John Le Tor or Pastor Toller in First Reformed, who are all closed off men whose closest relationship is locked up inside their heads and only spills out in the form of a journal that they keep for themselves or for some kind of self-therapy. They live simply, apart, and are somewhat ascetic in their habits and disciplines, in part due to some deep-seated guilt that they can only erase through some long-in-gestation act...or by writing those deepest, most private (and twisted) thoughts in their composition books. The journal only delays the inevitable.

Tell ticks off all the boxes. A wandering gambler, he's ascetic because, while traveling from casino to casino, he takes two valises—one for his clothes and the other for sheets and twine, so he can cover all the furniture in his motel room (for one night only, paid in cash). Disciplined in his lack of expression and the limited pallet of his wardrobe, he has the perfect poker face, while sitting at the table with the trademark strategem—wait, wait, wait, until something happens to take advantage of. Tell writes that he likes having a routine...a regimen—it's why he adapted to his eight years in prison better than he expected.

Wait a minute. He was in prison? Yes, technically a military prison, for his part in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. He realizes that he did wrong and totally accepts his punishment, but that doesn't stop the guilt for his responsibility in it or the nightmares that squirm through his brain at night (Schrader's depiction of which utilizes a lens-arrangement that wouldn't work for anything except a horror film). His affinity for isolation and his tamping down of emotions is also a strategy—it keeps the bitterness that his senior officers, specifically one (played by Willem Dafoe) walked away from Abu Ghraib scot-free, while Tell (being one of the ones with his face in front of the camera) is court-martialed and sent to his own form of Guantanamo.

There, with so much time, he learned card-tricks and the discipline of counting cards. It's why he does well at the casino. Blackjack, poker—he recommends only betting black or red on the wheel to those without skills, given the casino's odds—he wins just enough to not give anything away or arouse suspicion from the surveillance suits. Then, he moves on to the next stop, those two valises his only companions.

But, he has been noticed. Le Linda (Tiffany Haddish, serious this time, but her comedy background plays nicely) runs a "stable" of gamblers and she offers to stake Tell if he's willing to do some professional gambling tournaments, which he rejects. It's too conspicuous. He has a face and he doesn't like the scrutiny. But, in Atlantic City, he comes across a security-industry seminar, one of the guest speakers he recognizes—his old Abu Ghraib commander. He watches, but he leaves and quickly. But, he's followed by a kid, Cirk—"with a c"—(played by Tye Sheridan of Ready Player One), who gives him his number and says they should talk.

It takes awhile, but eventually Tell calls him and they meet. Cirk's story is an obsessed one—his Dad was at Abu Ghraib, too, and it broke him. Mom left. Dad abused the kid. And the kid did his research and wants to make that commanding officer pay—which disturbs Tell, and so much so that he comes out of his shell a bit—telling Le Linda he's all in for tournament poker, and taking the kid under his wing, driving him around, telling him to watch and learn. At least, it gets the kid out of his apartment and out of his own head.

Writer-director Paul Schrader has always done good work, but it's never been complacent work. His protagonists are always withdrawn outsiders—much like you'd imagine a writer to be—who are sparked (and often ignited) out of their self-imposed head-space into taking action, turning from hermit to Hamlet by whatever incentive they might have. And his Calvinist upbringing makes him one of those rare film-makers who know right from wrong, and makes sure that the audience sees it, too, not turning a blind eye to the evil of the world. Actually, he sorta revels in it, like dangling the threat of Hell over a Catholic student...and enjoying it. He and Scorsese are linked in that way—Marty set up the bankrolling entity for the film and "presents"—and it makes for an interesting antidote to the casual carnage of other films. Oh, there's carnage here, but Schrader doesn't dwell on it, skirting over it in a camera move, or simply staging it off-camera with sounds and letting your imagination do the work.

 

It's tough stuff, with a bit of a righteous indignation thrown in, and won't be everybody's sure bet for entertainment, but I was all in.