Paul Schrader revisits guilt and redemption in Venice

Paul Schrader says he has spent his life writing about guilt, sin and redemption, and traces that obsession to his strict Christian childhood. His latest film, The Basics of Philosophy, brings those concerns to Venice through a philosophy professor wrestling with a terrible secret and an unanswered question: whether he deserves forgiveness.

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The taxi driver is a drug dealer. He is a pastor. He is a card player. He is a gardener. And now he is a philosophy professor.

The film continues a thread running through many of Schrader’s best-known works, from Taxi Driver, whose screenplay he wrote, to First Reformed, The Card Counter and Master Gardener. Each centers on a solitary, tormented figure struggling with his conscience. “The taxi driver is a drug dealer. He is a pastor. He is a card player. He is a gardener. And now he is a philosophy professor,” Schrader told reporters.

The director, who turned 80 in July, said audiences must decide whether the professor escapes his demons by the end of the film. Jack Huston, who plays the lead, praised that ambiguity. “Paul and I talked about it. He told me he believes the film’s final scene should be the conversation that takes place when the audience leaves the theater,” Huston said.

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I was raised as a Dutch Calvinist. You cannot escape childhood. Mine was marked by the predestination of guilt, total depravity and all that.

Huston said the film avoids a conventional villain and instead examines wrongdoing hidden behind an ordinary appearance. “It is not the portrait of the bogeyman, the one who comes at you with a knife held high. It is the person who lives in plain sight. It is the ordinary man,” he said.

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Paul and I talked about it. He told me he believes the film’s final scene should be the conversation that takes place when the audience leaves the theater.

Schrader has made four films since 2021 and has three more in development. He said digital technology transformed his career by allowing him to complete films with far less money. Large tax breaks also helped lower costs and influenced where he filmed. The Basics of Philosophy was set in the Midwest because of incentives offered by Missouri and Kansas City, and it is screening out of competition at the Venice Film Festival.

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It is not the portrait of the bogeyman, the one who comes at you with a knife held high. It is the person who lives in plain sight. It is the ordinary man.