Jon Robin Baitz Guest ColumnistFor Variety‘s Writers on Writers, Jon Robin Baits pens a tribute to “The Card Counter” (screenplay Paul Schrader).“Card Counter,” written and directed by the austerely insistently un-vibrant moralist Paul Schraeder, is composed to a certain slow metronomic beat.
It ticks-ticks-ticks slowly, like the sound, inaudible to human ears of someone’s brain counting cards, waiting for the right moment to bet modestly enough to win small.But bet on what?
He’s spent decades placing wagers on the reasons for our bottomless capacity for American soul sickness. It’s how he makes films – he uses time and the slow burning accumulation of wrath and rage and bad vibes and bad faith to create a hallucinatory kind of tension.
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