Paul Schrader is an auteur filmmaker best known as the writer behind some of director Martin Scorsese’s most iconic films, including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ. As a director, Schrader helped launch Richard Gere’s career as a leading man in American Gigolo, and tends to be drawn to stories about troubled, isolated men grappling with existential crises. Those themes are on display in movies like First Reformed, The Card Counter, and Master Gardener, which form a loose series known as the “man in a room” trilogy.
After such a long time in the business, Schrader has no problem attracting top-tier talent to star in his films, like Ethan Hawke in First Reformed and Oscar Isaac in The Card Counter. He’s at it again with his new film, Non Compos Mentis. Deadline reports the movie will star Liam Hemsworth, best known for playing Gale Hawthorne in The Hunger Games movies and who recently took over the role of Geralt of Rivia from Henry Cavill in The Witcher, inspiring many comparisons.
“Non Compos Mentis” is a Latin phrase which translates to “not of sound mind,” which is very on brand for a Schrader movie. It’s about two brothers who grapple with their mother’s decline into dementia. One of the brothers is a polished New York City defense attorney and the other is, as Deadline puts it, “a hard-edged corporate heir.” Their uneasy bond is tested when the lawyer starts up an obsessive affair with a younger woman, which leads to betrayal and a battle over the family fortune.
Liam Hemsworth Will Grapple With Obsession and Desire in ‘Non Compos Mentis’
Non Compos Mentis will also star Caleb Landry Jones, Sarah Pidgeon, and Dianne Wiest. Deadline doesn’t specify who’s playing which character, but we can make some reasonable assumptions. Hemsworth and Landry Jones (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Luc Besson’s Dracula), both of whom are 36 years old, must be playing the brothers. Sarah Pidgeon, who has appeared in movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer and who received a Tony nomination for her work in Stereophonic, will play the younger woman. And two-time Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest (for Hannah and Her Sisters and Bullets Over Broadway) must be playing the mother.
Producer David Gonzales, who’s worked with Schrader on several films, gave us this tease: “Paul is returning to the erotic thriller to examine how desire can destabilize power within a family. With this exceptional cast, we’re building a film that is both intimate and explosive.”
Everything is lining up for Non Compos Mentis to be another intense Paul Schrader experience. The movie starts shooting in New York this spring. There is no release date as of yet.
- Birthdate
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January 13, 1990
- Birthplace
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Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
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