The Basics of Philosophy review – Paul Schrader back to his cool, cruel best
Venice film festival When a figure from his past turns up to a family funeral, a college professor faces an agonising dilemma that makes him question his own morality and whether he can change Paul Schrader is back with his most successful picture since First Reformed in 2018. It’s a stereotypical Schrader study of masculinity in some ways, about a man agonising over moral choice and ethical behaviour while – as so often in Schrader’s movies – reading and writing philosophy in an austerely furnished room. And yet there is nothing abstract about the issue he faces here. The film moves with a determined suspenseful tread, everything hangs together right up to the queasy final shot and Schrader flavours everything with a streak of melodrama and even a kind of gaunt black comedy. Karl Glusman’s cameo is surely the weirdest thing at Venice this year. The scene is a blandly prestigious liberal arts college, presided over by a genial, grey-haired dean, played in cameo by Richard Gere. John J...