Paul Schrader‘s THE CARD COUNTER is a response to the prototypical gambler film THE HUSTLER (1961) in which Paul Newman plays young pool player Fast Eddie Felson and Martin Scorsese‘s sequel THE COLOR OF MONEY (1986) in which Newman plays the older Fast Eddie who takes young player Vincent (Tom Cruise) under his wing. In THE CINCINNATI KID (1965) by Norman Jewison, Steve McQueen goes up against Edward G. Robinson. All of these three films were stories of disillusionment, but they were also about the pleasure of gambling, and represented the damaging and brutal aspects of capitalism as well as the pure pleasure in competing.

In THE CARD COUNTER, Oscar Isaac plays the counter-figure to Fast Eddie and the Cincinnati Kid. William Tell isn‘t a gambler out of passion. He learned how to count cards in prison, where he was serving time for his war crimes in Abu Ghraib. He plays poker and black jack according to mathematical probabilities at the low stakes tables in order to not get banned from casinos. Tell lives in a world where nothing can feel alive anymore. The casino rooms are always windowless, he turns his hotel rooms into mausoleums in which all of the furniture is draped and wrapped in white towels. When he‘s approached by Cirk, a young man who wants to take revenge on his mentor Gordo (Willem Dafoe), a mercenery soldier who taught Cirk‘s father and William Tell how to torture yet was never held accountable, Tell tries to offer the young man a different outlook on life. In order to provide him with money for a new start, he enters a competition in LaLinda‘s (Tiffany Haddish) “stall.“ THE CARD COUNTER avoids all the elements that could create tension or interest in the game. Winning isn‘t even important, aside for a complete idiot whose fans chant “USA, USA“ across the casino halls.

THE CARD COUNTER is a parable for US society, wherein the lost souls and self-deluded go on and vaguely hope for salvation. There are a few moments of hope that creep into the darkness of Schrader‘s vision. LaLinda takes William to an illuminated park. Bright LED lights replace the starry sky under which love could‘ve once blossomed. But Schrader turns the artificial sea of lights into visual magic and lets us dream of electronic sparks of life before the small, artificial outburst ends. Schrader‘s dark vision is an internal US perspective which has given up on an external gaze. The perpetrators are the victims and are self destructing. Schrader‘s perspective has barely changed since his post-Vietnam drama TAXI DRIVER.

Tom Dorow

Translation: Elinor Lewy