First Reformed

First Reformed stars Ethan Hawke as Reverend Ernst Toller, a Christian minister experiencing a crisis of faith. He is in charge of a 250-year-old Dutch Reformed church that faces dwindling attendance and is viewed as a museum or “gift shop” by many of the parishioners of the megachurch down the street, which owns and maintains it. Toller spends his time delivering sermons to the tiny subset of worshipers who prefer a quieter, more traditional approach to religion; trying to manage his physical health and personal demons, and recording his daily activities and thoughts in a diary. These journal entries, which we hear in Hawke’s voice-over, document a religious man’s slow and quiet mental breakdown. Toller’s faith in himself, his church, and all of humanity are further challenged when Mary (Amanda Seyfried), one of his congregants, asks him to counsel her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger), a radical environmentalist reluctant to bring their unborn child into a world he sees as doomed.

The film is the work of writer/director Paul Schrader, who I’d written off after too many terrible pictures, none worse than his cynical, near-unwatchable erotic thriller The Canyons (2013). Schrader has done some amazing work over his long career—he wrote Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980) and directed Blue Collar (1978) and Affliction (1997)—but the vast majority of his pictures are morose, simplistic, self-absorbed ponderings. But this is not the case with First Reformed. Along with Taxi Driver, this is the movie Schrader was put on Earth to make (if you choose to believe in destiny or divine intervention in cinema). In First Reformed, he explores his lifelong obsessions with guilt, spiritual emptiness, and self-destructive behaviour, but here he transcends the psychological depravity and cerebral angst, which render so many of his earlier films both ugly and dull, to produce a riveting, deeply moving work that's also one of the most relevant films of the decade. 

One need not possess any religious faith, upbringing, or interest to be moved by the events in First Reformed. And Reverend Toller’s existential crisis is one most audience can relate to at this political and historical moment. Yet there’s also something distinct and specific to American Christianity explored here. Schrader subtly observes the ways in which certain Christians cherry-pick Biblical passages to justify extreme, violent, and destructive behaviours, in much the same way some radical Islamists deploy passages from the Koran out of context. Yet when we hear Toller’s calm, measured narration, neither he nor the Biblical lines he recites sound dangerous at all.

First Reformed feels both immediate and timeless, and it is far less academic than I would expect from Schrader. The 72-year-old writer/director had an oppressive Calvinist upbringing, never saw a movie until he was in his late teens, and then famously rejected his religious background, gravitating quickly to the sex and violence of Hollywood. But his introduction to cinema was through the austere lens of 1950s and ‘60s foreign cinema. Whereas most of his contemporaries grew up with John Wayne, Jerry Lewis, and cheesy sci-fi invaders from outer space, Schrader’s cinematic baseline was drawn from the dour work of Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Yasujirō Ozu. His time as a critic was spent analyzing, and lionizing, these auteurs. But until now he’s never attempted to emulate any of his early influences. In that way, First Reformed plays like a young man’s film made by an old man filmmaker. It is every bit a mash-up of favourite movies from a director’s adolescence as Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark or Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill.

Schrader’s most obvious homage is to Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest (1951). Both pictures centre on an ailing, melancholy minister living an ascetic life and keeping daily journal entries, which he narrates in voiceover. Bergman’s Winter Light (1963) is another major touchstone, both in terms of photography (many of Schrader’s restrained compositions intentionally recall shots from Winter Light) and theme (both films are about a man of God in charge of a remote parish who is in extreme anguish over his inability to help his congregants). Schrader also borrows from his own work, as Toller’s imbalances, preoccupations, and actions echo Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and Willem Dafoe’s John LeTour in Light Sleeper (1992).

The style of First Reformed is pure minimalist austerity, except when it’s not. Schrader shoots in the 1.33:1 Academy aspect ratio, with a locked-down, static camera and clear, deliberately composed shots. He makes no attempt to filter or mask the cold, raw nature of the digital photography he employs. His cutting is minimal, with many long scenes playing out in single takes. There’s no music, except when a church choir is visibly singing. But the film deviates from its own cinematic rules. Occasionally, the camera pans as a character exits frame or the sound design by industrial musician Lustmord acts like a musical score. At two of the film’s key points, Schrader violates his strict aesthetics in ways that seem downright outrageous for this type of picture. (I won’t spoil those moments here.) 

As Toller, Hawke delivers his best performance to date. His career and screen persona doesn’t make him an obvious choice to play a clergyman, but he physically projects Toller’s palpable suffering with quiet restraint. Sygfried, after so many forgettable sex-kitten roles, finally gets a chance to show what a fine actress she is. Here she is tasked with playing a character sometimes viewed as a metaphor, sometimes as a real human being in crisis, and sometimes as both simultaneously. It’s not an easy part to pull off, and she handles it with aplomb. Cedric Kyles, better known as Cedric the Entertainer, plays the charismatic pastor Joel Jeffers, Toller’s boss and the man ultimately responsible for the souls and the bottom line of his church. Kyles’s kindly and approachable depiction of Jeffers, and the warm way Schrader writes him is unexpectedly sympathetic. The head of the megachurch, typically a movie villain, is unquestionably the character in this story whose mental health is the most robust. Philip Ettinger underplays Mary’s husband, the angst-ridden environmentalist, so as to conceal his character’s deep denial and narcissism, which don’t come to light until we see how Toller begins to embody those qualities himself. Every actor in this picture, down to the smallest role, gives exactly what’s required—no more and no less—which is a far more challenging task then it looks. 

First Reformed captures, to one degree or another, what most thinking and caring Americans are experiencing at this point in history. But it is not a movie for everyone. Many audiences will bristle at its austere stylistic choices and the ways in which it violates them to make its points. It also culminates with one of those ambiguous endings that drive some viewers up the wall. I myself struggle with the ending, even after seeing the movie a few times. Still, Schrader’s film left me thinking about its images, themes, and message far more than most contemporary pictures have.