The Card Counter

 The Card Counter (2021)

Written and directed by Paul Schrader

  This movie channels collective guilt and rage at what we have been made to do. How, in our name, our pain, shock, and grief was twisted and exploited by people in power to make us monsters worse by far than the act that hurt us, that caused us this pain and horror
. 

  Will Tell (Oscar Isaac) the character in the movie, has been made into a monster, a sadistic automaton, manipulated into performing horrifying acts against other humans. He is going to have to pay for this, for what he was made to do by people in the highest positions of power. He has to pay, to take the fall, for what they made him do, as his “superiors'” retain their lofty, lucuratice, respected, and honored positions. 

He tries to just go on with his life after. He likes to play cards and is good at it. He has clamped down the justifiable feelings of vengeance and guilt he has to carry with him always. He can never forget, but plays cards.
 

  He meets another damaged, traumatized man (Tye Sheridan) and this sets the story in motion.

  Yes we were told to never forget after the collective trauma. Then asked to support people in power who used our trauma for further a separate and horrifying agenda. We put millions of others, those who managed to survive, through trauma, to a position where they can never forget which will cycle into more violence, horror, trauma, and more never forgetting that has not yet ended and likely never will. 

  The Card Counter is a very disturbing, deeply moving artwork that channels our collective guilt, rage, vengefulness, and yearning for justice, reconciliation, or to somehow get it all to STOP. 

An important movie and a masterpiece from a broken heart. A message from that broken heart to ours, if we still have one.