Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter is another powerful, deeply moving film from the veteran filmmaker, continuing in his spare, quiet, introspective aesthetic. For all of its stillness and quiet, it’s an angry film, exploring our nation’s collective guilt – a country that has all but moved on from the grave moral bankruptcy of the Bush years and our post-9/11 willingness to overlook wartime atrocities in the name of our own feelings of personal safety and security. But in the midst of this anger, in the midst of this exploration of guilt, there are also questions of redemption and forgiveness. Is such a thing possible when we’ve perpetrated one of the worst crimes imaginable? When we as a society have allowed such crimes to occur in our name? Schrader uses the casino as a backdrop for these questions of guilt and redemption and forgiveness – a repetitive and soul-draining purgatory without the joy or life or vibrancy you’d find in most films that take place in the world of gambling. And the bleak, gray purgatory is contrasted by the extreme wide-angle hell of the shots he gives us of Abu Ghraib and the illuminated heaven we see in moments of connection – the potential for forgiveness in the touch of another human being. It’s an extraordinary film that gets better the more you analyze and explore the way Schrader’s visual techniques and aesthetics so thoroughly support the ideas he’s exploring – and it’s anchored by some great performances, especially from Oscar Isaac, who has never been better. It’s an exceptional film.