…who wrote the screenplays for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, among other movies. Philosopher Cheyney Ryan kindly shared this description of the plot (spoilers!):

The film centers on John Jorrisen, played by Jack Huston, a respected philosophy professor at a liberal-arts college. He teaches philosophy as though it can clarify the basic moral questions of life, but he is carrying a secret from his own past that calls into question his ability to live by the principles he teaches.

The crisis is triggered by the death of John’s wealthy father, Melvyn. At the funeral John encounters Miguel Vasque, the son of the family’s gardener. Flashbacks reveal that John had sexually abused Miguel years earlier and that John’s father subsequently paid Miguel off to suppress the scandal. Miguel’s reappearance forces John to confront an act he has repressed rather than genuinely answered for.

John is involved with Rebecca Richards, a psychology professor played by Sofia Boutella. As his past resurfaces, he turns increasingly to philosophy to understand what he has done and whether moral transformation is really possible. Schrader reportedly makes Spinoza especially important to this dimension of the film; Karl Glusman appears as Spinoza.

The philosophical question is therefore very Schrader-like:

Closely connected are questions of responsibility, confession, self-deception, forgiveness, and redemption. Reuters describes the film as returning explicitly to Schrader’s longstanding concerns with sin, guilt, and redemption, shaped by his Calvinist background.

What makes the premise especially interesting is that John is a philosopher. The title seems partly ironic. He has intellectual command of “the basics of philosophy,” but the film asks whether philosophical understanding can actually tell him what to do with guilt. Knowing arguments about agency, freedom, responsibility, or moral change is not the same thing as answering to the person one has harmed.

As Professor Ryan quipped to me: “don’t see how Spinoza is going to help this guy,” pointing to Ethics IV, Proposition 54: “Repentance is not a virtue, or does not arise from reason; but he who repents of an action is doubly wretched or infirm.”