Watching this Paul Schrader’s film (the screenwriter of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull) about a card player (Oscar Isaac) who drifts from casino to casino, winning small amounts at blackjack, left me with very unusual impressions. He’s helped by his card-counting skills, perfected during his imprisonment in a military jail. At first, you expect the entire picture to be about gambling, but in fact, the casinos, blackjack, and poker turn out to be nothing more than a metaphor for much more serious — and for many, not entirely obvious — themes. It’s also worth watching for the incredible Oscar Isaac, confidently moving toward his namesake statuette. The Card Counter is truly unique cinema — don’t miss it.

Warning: the text contains spoilers!

Paul Schrader’s most famous works as a screenwriter tell stories of deeply traumatized men. In Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese, the protagonist was Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a lonely Vietnam War veteran (the film was released shortly after the war ended). In Scorsese’s Raging Bull, De Niro again played a man — a remarkable boxer — plagued by psychological problems. In The Card Counter Schrader tells the story of another loner: William Tell (Oscar Isaac), a former soldier whose psychological trauma, acquired during his service in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, doesn’t let him sleep at night. The haunting nature of his memories of prison life is emphasized by an ultra–wide-angle “fish-eye” lens and loud heavy metal on the soundtrack.

Both Taxi Driver and The Card Counter point to two unflattering chapters in American history: the protracted military conflicts started by the U.S. under flimsy pretexts — and eventually lost. The American government, however, doesn’t much like to recall these episodes and, even now, shows no intention of admitting defeat in Iraq (it acknowledged its defeat in Vietnam only after the Cold War ended).

This urge to conceal reality is embodied in the film’s protagonist, William, and his main rival at the poker table — a player who can’t stand losing. He’s called “Mr. USA,” always dressed in a sleeveless undershirt and a baseball cap with American symbols, shouting patriotic slogans during games, which greatly annoys Tell. But more than that, according to one of William’s old acquaintances, behind all that glitter hides… a Ukrainian. Thus, Schrader draws attention to the substitution of reality, when behind flashy packaging, lofty speeches, and slogans there lurks something false and empty.

As for William himself, a key detail here is the white sheets he carefully wraps around all the furniture and objects in the motel rooms where he spends the night. The meaning of this ritual is to hide reality — for, as Tell says, he carries an unpayable moral debt for the crimes he committed in Abu Ghraib prison.

Secrecy is, in fact, the main trait of the protagonist. He’s always hiding: physically, by avoiding attention, winning only small sums at casinos and refusing to participate in large tournaments; and emotionally — his poker face rarely betrays any feelings.

The motif of concealment also appears in how the director depicts violence in the film — or rather, how he doesn’t show it. The worst horrors remain off-screen (only a few glimpses of torture flicker in Tell’s nightmares). This is a powerful device, because, as is well known, the anticipation of horror is often scarier than the horror itself. Thus, William’s threat of torture — his mask of cold composure slipping for the first time since leaving prison — truly terrifies Cirk (Tye Sheridan). In my analysis of Promising Young Woman, I called that film “passive-aggressive”; The Card Counter is exactly that kind of cinema.

The furniture wrapped in white sheets in the motel rooms also symbolizes emptiness — the same void that reigns in William’s soul as he drifts aimlessly from one casino to another. This feeling is reinforced by the locations: empty parking lots, deserted night streets, the bars of small-town casinos, the prison cell. Within this emptiness, one can also glimpse America itself — the real America, stripped of the gloss of success and grandeur; the America of losers chasing luck at roulette wheels, blackjack tables, and slot machines.

From William’s conversations with La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), we learn that most successful poker players, those earning millions at tournaments, are actually up to their necks in debt to their managers. But people don’t talk about this side of life (returning us to the motif of concealment), because they prefer stories about the American dream come true. Yet in the director’s eyes, that dream is a kind of casino, where some get lucky and others don’t — and you should treat it accordingly. Like a game of roulette: you win and move on, you lose and move on.

Poker is the perfect example of a game whose essence lies in concealment: of emotions, thoughts, and the faces of the cards in a player’s hand. That’s why the best players in the film are those who have mastered the art of hiding the truth — the Ukrainian masquerading as a U.S. patriot, and William, who hides himself from everyone.

Thus, the surrounding world appears as a kind of game, where success comes to those who are best at pretending. It’s no coincidence that the opening shot of the film shows the green surface of a poker table, where the game unfolds.

While explaining the peculiarities of blackjack — in which past moves affect the future — Tell is essentially drawing a parallel to his own life. As a child, he dreamed of traveling by car, of being free. But now, even though he leads a similar lifestyle, Tell is anything but free: the past dogs his heels and won’t let him live fully.

William finds himself in a dead-end situation: he can’t change his past, his habits, or convince Cirk to abandon his plan for revenge against Major Gordo (Willem Dafoe). Where can he find a way out? The answer is tattooed on Tell’s back: “I trust my life to Providence, I trust my soul to Grace.”

Meeting La Linda changes everything: she pierces William’s defenses and “awakens” him. He falls in love and, thanks to Cirk, allows himself to embrace that feeling — after many years of loneliness, it brings him euphoria, beautifully conveyed in the nighttime park scene.

Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, to which the film’s final shot refers, becomes a symbol of the hero’s transformation — the birth of a new man, thanks to the energy of love. Yes, Tell ends up behind bars again, but this time the prison cell is merely a place of physical confinement. In his soul, he is free.

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