by John Zenoni
‘Master Gardener’ is a film that I truly do want to like but I have so many mixed feelings about it. The main actors - Sigourney Weaver, who is a hoot in her role as Norma Haverhill, Quintessa Swindell as Maya, and Joel Edgerton as Narvel Roth - all do pretty good jobs in their roles, although Edgerton is, in my opinion, somewhat over-the-top, at times, in his role. His performance in moments almost feels forced and not realistic.
Edgerton’s character, Narvel, is a gardener who works for Norma and has been asked to take in Norma’s great-niece as an apprentice and work with her to keep her ‘straight.’ Apparently, Maya, whose mother passed recently, has been struggling with the loss and gotten herself involved with a bad crowd. As Narvel begins to work with Maya, who just happens to be biracial (which plays a key component in events that happen), we hear in the voiceover as he writes in his journal, that he's been involved in some bad things in his past. That will eventually come into light and it does catch you off guard.
The pros of this film are that there are some beautiful shots of the garden that Narvel and staff work on and some still shots of other scenes that are disturbing - I don’t want to say of what, for that would give away a key part of the film. Also, the chemistry between Weaver and Edgerton’s characters works pretty well, although, to me, it takes a long time to get to the evolution of that ‘working’ relationship. I'm not sure that I completely bought Edgerton’s and Swindell’s characters' chemistry though, in the end. Initially, as teacher and apprentice, it started off great and realistic but toward the end, as things began to change, it just seemed to happen too fast and was questionable.
The film seems self-righteous and ‘preachy’ at times and I think that's what bothers me. It has good intentions but could have been a better film in the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment