A key early scene in the latest film from Paul Schrader nods ostentatiously towards an earlier, more agitated picture by this most distinguished of directors.
In American Gigolo(1980), Richard Gere, a determinedly heterosexual companion of rich ladies, dresses himself with fastidious, near-obsessive care. Ties and shirts are laid out like holy vestments, before being pulled on with ceremonious concentration.
In The Walker, Woody Harrelson, an unashamedly gay companion of rich ladies, undergoes a similar undressing sequence. The ties are coiled up and placed in a special drawer. The shoes are neatly tidied away. Then, in a final deflation, Woody removes his wig and reveals his monkish tonsure.
The Walkeris the fourth in a (very) loosely connected series of pictures that began with Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver(1976) and continued with Schrader's own American Gigoloand Light Sleeper(1992). In each, Schrader (who wrote Taxi Driver, of course) offers us a cynical loner who, though humble in his status, has a keen eye for the hypocrisy that drives society.
Harrelson's Carter Page III, the son of a respected liberal senator, spends his evenings escorting the wives of important men to the opera, entertaining them in gossip or challenging them to lengthy games of canasta.
The picture begins with the camera creeping round an ornate room - camp chatter bounces of the upholstery - to discover one of those card games in progress. By casting such regal luminaries as Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin and Kristin Scott Thomas as the card players, Schrader quickly alerts us that this Washington DC still has flavours of Versailles. When Scott Thomas discovers her lover murdered, Page, eager to deflect scandal, pretends he found the body.
The conspiracy that unravels never feels like anything more than a complex of interwoven Maguffins. This cool, disciplined picture is more concerned with bottling the political smells of the age and offering subtle hints of its protagonist's complex personality than driving the narrative.
The undressing sequence makes it clear that Page is a more vulnerable character than his three predecessors and that he is more aware of the delusions that spring from vanity. The film that surrounds him is, appropriately enough, a considerably more sedate, less emotionally charged piece than Light Sleeperor American Gigolo(not to mention the terrifying Taxi Driver). Indeed, at times it feels somewhat stifling in its reliance on long, meandering conversations. The knowledge that Schrader shot much of the film on the Isle of Man may explain why so much happens indoors, but it doesn't justify the lassitude that infects the middle part of the story.
Never mind. Buoyed up by a touchingly wounded performance from Harrelson,
The Walkeremerges as a witty, involving piece of work that bears the unmistakable stamp of one of cinema's most singular talents. Roll on Part Five.
