First Reformed

There’s some­thing extreme­ly per­son­al about Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. So much so, the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing it feels like spy­ing on a con­fes­sion­al booth as Schrad­er – who was so near­ly a man of the cloth him­self – talks to God. The vet­er­an film­mak­er has been a bit off his game in recent years, but in return­ing to the spir­i­tu­al ter­ri­to­ry which has fas­ci­nat­ed him as a writer and film schol­ar for decades, he’s cre­at­ed some­thing tru­ly spe­cial: a con­ver­sa­tion with some high­er pow­er that takes place on a cin­e­ma screen.

Rev­erend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) lives a pious life in present-day upstate New York, where he’s the cus­to­di­an of the First Reformed Church. Described as a ​“sou­venir shop” by Toller, the con­gre­ga­tion is dwin­dling and the small chapel itself more valu­able to the com­mu­ni­ty as a tourist attrac­tion than a place of wor­ship. Ernst – a for­mer mil­i­tary chap­lain sec­ond­ed to First Reformed after the oblit­er­a­tion of his fam­i­ly – is as much a rel­ic as his home, and he decides to keep a jour­nal for a year as an exper­i­ment. His tor­tured entries make up the film’s nar­ra­tive, revealed in Hawke’s earnest, solemn voice-over, as he strug­gles to rec­on­cile his grow­ing unease at the inter­sec­tion of cap­i­tal­ism and reli­gion with his spirituality.

Mary (Aman­da Seyfried) approach­es the good Rev­erend hop­ing that he might be able to talk to her dis­tant, spi­ralling envi­ron­men­tal activist hus­band Michael (Philip Ettinger) and bring him some peace – but his meet­ing with Michael and Mary only leads Toller fur­ther into the dark­ness that has plagued him since the death of his son in Iraq. ​“I talked my son into a war with no moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tion,” he tells Michael, mat­ter-of-fact. He’s been pun­ish­ing him­self ever since, and as First Reformed nears its 250^th anniver­sary, Ernst is forced to con­tend with the expec­ta­tions of reli­gious con­glom­er­ate Abun­dant Life, whose cor­po­rate approach to Chris­tian­i­ty sees Toller ill at ease.

Con­fronting envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter and social decay, Schrad­er seems deeply crit­i­cal of the mon­eti­sa­tion of reli­gion which has lead to ​‘super church­es’ in West­ern Chris­tian­i­ty. Although Toller’s boss Pas­tor Jef­fers (Cedric Kyles) insists ​“There’s no dol­lar sign on his pul­pit, no Amer­i­can flag either”, Schrad­er dis­putes this, as well as the cyn­i­cism which sees big busi­ness buy­ing into the insti­tu­tion of the church – how can the church be apo­lit­i­cal when it’s cor­po­rate? Steeped in the plagues of late cap­i­tal­ism and cli­mate change, there’s a def­i­nite solem­ness about First Reformed, and a sense of incred­i­ble despair.

Nowhere is this exem­pli­fied more than in Hawke’s mes­meris­ing per­for­mance – an absolute career best. The cam­era stays with him almost con­stant­ly, and he embod­ies a man adrift even when he says noth­ing – a held breath or clenched jaw speaks to Toller’s inner tur­moil. He presents Toller as a man grow­ing increas­ing­ly dis­il­lu­sioned with the cause he’s ded­i­cat­ed his whole life to. Yet Toller is also a true Schrad­er pro­tag­o­nist, spi­ralling into his own mis­ery – he says it him­self, quot­ing Thomas Mer­ton: ​“I know that noth­ing can change, and there is no hope.”

This spi­ralling dis­il­lu­sion­ment leads to aus­tere­ness even in the film’s humor­ous moments, such as Toller berat­ing his friend and col­league Esther (Vic­to­ria Hill), or a church youth choir solemn­ly singing Neil Young’s envi­ron­men­tal protest song ​“Who’s Gonna Stand Up?” Each one elic­its a sort of pecu­liar response where­by it’s hard to know if you should laugh or cry.

It’s arguably up there with Schrader’s strongest work in terms of aes­thet­ics, too – Lust­mord pro­vide an atmos­pher­ic, ambi­ent score inter­spersed with haunt­ing organ music and ren­di­tions of pop­u­lar hymns, and Alexan­der Dynan’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy cap­tures grad­ual the shift from light to dark, sculpt­ing scenes with the intense fram­ing of Raphael’s Renais­sance mas­ter­pieces, and lat­er Dali’s sur­re­al­ist work. The sight of baby pink Pep­to Bis­mol poured into a glass of whisky, or red blood seep­ing into white snow, speak to a world of phys­i­cal decay. From the man who wrote the book on tran­scen­den­tal cin­e­ma, First Reformed feels like a cul­mi­na­tion for Schrad­er, who has always been a schol­ar of film as well as a filmmaker.

All of this builds to a mag­nif­i­cent, bat­shit cli­max which is like­ly to divide opin­ion, but for sheer audac­i­ty and bold vision alone, First Reformed is up there with Schrader’s best (and would make for a crack­ing dou­ble fea­ture with Mar­tin Scorsese’s Silence, which Schrad­er once tried to make him­self). First Reformed is a film about los­ing your reli­gion, and more than being a damn­ing indict­ment of Amer­i­ca under late cap­i­tal­ism, it wres­tles with the despair that many of us feel right now with regards to polit­i­cal and social tur­moil. We don’t want to think of our­selves as pow­er­less, but Schrader’s film con­fronts that pos­si­bil­i­ty, and in cut­ting to the bone, toys with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that even if God is lis­ten­ing, he might be past for­giv­ing us.