Paul Schrader's 'The Basics of Philosophy' premieres in Venice to a divided reception

Paul Schrader returned to the Venice Film Festival on Friday night with a film that revisits the territory he has mined since he wrote "Taxi Driver" more than fifty years ago: an isolated man, a room full of books, and a moral reckoning he cannot outrun. "The Basics of Philosophy," which had its world premiere out of competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, stars Jack Huston as a philosophy professor whose ordered life collapses when a man from his past turns up at his father's funeral.

A philosopher confronts a buried act

According to the synopsis posted on the festival's official site, Huston plays Dr. John Jorissen, a professor at a small Midwestern liberal-arts college who is writing a book on the philosopher Baruch Spinoza while dating a colleague in the psychology department, Rebecca Richards, played by Sofia Boutella. The story turns when John's estranged, wealthy father dies and a younger man named Miguel Vasque, played by Daniel Zovatto, appears among the mourners. As detailed in The Guardian's review of the film, Miguel is the son of the family's former gardener, and John sexually abused him as a teenager; John's father quietly paid for the boy's private schooling and college in the years afterward. The reappearance forces John to weigh whether a person who has done such harm can ever be said to have changed, a question Schrader has returned to across a career built on what critics have long called his "man in a room" films, including "First Reformed," "The Card Counter" and "Master Gardener." Bill Pullman plays John's father, Melvyn, and the cast also includes Dana Delany, Shiloh Fernandez and Karl Glusman, with Richard Gere appearing in a cameo as a college dean.

A moderate ovation, a divided response

The film screened in the festival's Venice Open, a non-competitive slate that the Biennale describes as showcasing works "by established authors" outside the main prize race, meaning it is not eligible for the Golden Lion that will be awarded on September 12. Schrader, 80, and his cast received what Variety reported was a four-and-a-half-minute standing ovation on Friday night, with the crowd chanting "Bravi, Bravi!" as Huston patted the director on the back; Boutella, Pullman and Zovatto huddled with Schrader as the applause continued.

Reviews out of Venice have been split. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw called it "Paul Schrader's most successful picture since First Reformed in 2018," praising its "cool, cruel pace." Deadline's review credited the octogenarian filmmaker with still making "the kind of grownup films rarely seen anymore." Other outlets were harsher: IndieWire's review described the film as "quietly explosive, but not dangerous enough," and at least one trade critic called it the director's weakest work in years. Huston's performance drew consistent praise; Variety critic Jessica Kiang wrote that he is "impressive here because of the peculiar intensity of his gaze, the too-smoothly-controlled, cultured timbre of his voice, the general sense of something about him being just that bit off."

Fifty years of guilt on screen, with Scorsese behind it

The film's arrival in Venice was reinforced last month when Martin Scorsese joined as an executive producer, as Deadline first reported. It is the second time Scorsese has taken an executive-producer credit on a Schrader film, after 2021's "The Card Counter," extending a collaboration that began when Schrader wrote "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull" and "The Last Temptation of Christ" for Scorsese to direct. The sales agency Noora Films also boarded the project ahead of the premiere to handle international sales, with the company's founder, Pia Patatian, saying it was "exactly the kind of bold, elevated project" the agency wants to represent.

Venice has effectively become a second home for Schrader in recent years. "First Reformed," "The Card Counter" and "Master Gardener" all premiered at the festival, and in 2022 he received a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement there. At a press conference on the Lido on Friday, before the evening screening, Schrader connected the film's preoccupation with sin and consequence to his upbringing in a strict Calvinist household in Michigan.

"My childhood was one of predestination, guilt, total depravity and all that. I don't know how I do not write about guilt and redemption."

That remark, delivered to reporters and relayed by Variety, echoes the language Schrader has used for decades to describe why his protagonists — a taxi driver, a Vietnam veteran, a reverend, a card player, a gardener, now a philosophy professor — keep circling the same questions of complicity and atonement.

What happens next

Because it played out of competition, "The Basics of Philosophy" will not figure into the jury deliberations that Maggie Gyllenhaal is overseeing ahead of the festival's closing awards on September 12. Its more immediate business is distribution: the film screened in Venice without a U.S. distributor attached, and the mixed-to-positive critical response, combined with Scorsese's producing credit and Noora Films' international sales mandate, will shape the negotiations likely to follow over the coming weeks at the festival and at the Toronto International Film Festival, which overlaps with Venice's final days. For Schrader, whose recent films have found audiences mainly through awards-season specialty distribution rather than wide release, the reception in Venice — respectful, occasionally rapturous, but far from unanimous — suggests the picture will follow a similar path: a limited theatrical run built around notices for Huston's performance, positioned for the discussion that tends to follow Schrader into the fall festival calendar rather than for the box office.