NO WAY BACK

The resurgence, in the past decade, of Paul Schrader as one of the most accomplished and acclaimed contemporary movie directors is part of a bigger trend: the self-reinvention of Hollywood auteurs as independent filmmakers.

- RICHARD BRODY

Since 2010, such directors as Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, and Sofia Coppola have made their movies without studio financing, thereby often enjoying more creative freedom than previously. Schrader, who has been directing movies since 1978, has been an enthusiastic adopter of this production mode; his film "The Canyons" (2013) was crowdfunded on Kickstarter. His recent trio of independent movies-"First Reformed" (2017), "The Card Counter" (2021), and "Master Gardener" (2022)-offers scathing visions of corrupted American institutions through dramas of individuals whose repentance takes destructive forms. Constituting a kind of trilogy about expiation through violencewhether toward others or toward oneself the films have a newfound starkness that reflects the severity of their subjects. Schrader's latest, "Oh, Canada," is his freest yet in terms of form, and, in its way, also presents his most extreme depiction of a fallen life. It is another drama of regret and confession, but Schrader's approach is altogether new, making the movie seem less like the capstone of a tetralogy than like a radical revision of the themes and the styles of its three predecessors.