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Schrader Transcends and Provokes with Profound Character Study


Paul Schrader is a figure really only known in cinephile circles. In addition to having written a number of great movies of the 1970s and 80s including Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ, and being an accomplished director in his own right (Hardcore, American Gigolo, Affliction), he’s also written extensively on film criticism and theory. His popular essay, Notes on Noir, was even required reading in one of my Film History classes. He’s a man who knows his medium incredibly well, and it’s perhaps for that reason why First Reformed is one of the most thoughtful films I’ve seen come out in recent years. Every scene is presented knowing it will be analyzed, every action and beat carefully constructed. It’s a slow film, but there’s method to every minute of it.
A former military chaplain, Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) is the pastor of First Reformed Church, a historical chapel in upstate New York, with troubled physical and mental health issues. As he commits to writing a journal for a year, he tends to Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a pregnant woman whose husband Michael (Philip Ettinger) is a despairing radical environmentalist. Still shaken by the death of his son in Iraq, combined with a growing disillusionment with the world and a crisis of faith, Toller attempts to find purpose and hope through despondent circumstances.
This film feels like it was made by one of the masters, clearly taking direct influence from great art-house cinema. It belongs to the Transcendental Style Schrader coined in his book of the same name, characterized by slow pacing and insubstantial editing, common to the films of (as focussed on in the book) directors like Carl Theodor Dreyer, Yasujiro Ozu, and Robert Bresson. And indeed there are many moments in First Reformed that feel like an Ozu film with lingering unmoving shots, or a Dreyer film with empty spaces, particularly in Toller’s manse, to reflect the emptiness felt by the main character. It draws you into the world, banalities and all, allows you to contemplate and more closely feel the characters, so that when it’s departed from for something more conventional, it stands in much starker contrast, and thus is more effective. And there are a number of times both visually and narratively where First Reformed does that.
Schrader is an expert at writing characters in conflict with themselves -he gave us Travis Bickle after all; and Reverend Toller is no exception, superbly played with depth and desolation by Ethan Hawke. This is a character with frustrations, doubt, regret, desperation, and some resentment, that all has to be cloaked in a façade of sure spiritedness. Throughout the film he goes back and forth between actions predicating redemption and downfall -Schrader has an interest in self-destructive characters after all. And Hawke goes above and beyond with this demanding role, exercising passion and uncertainty through his thoughts, while remaining subtle in person. You’re constantly intrigued by Toller, worried for him as well, but also frightened of him, and the root of these feelings are etched in the very manner of his character. Ethan Hawke proves once again that with excellent writing, he’s one of the greatest working film actors. It’s his best performance since Boyhood, and one of his career highlights overall. Amanda Seyfried is very good as Toller’s tether, the one person who seems to need him and rely on the faith he administers. She and him forge a real connection that’s essential to the movie. Cedric Kyles (a.k.a. Cedric the Entertainer) also appears as the pastor of the megachurch that owns First Reformed’s landmark, drawing an important contrast between two very different means of Christian fellowship.
This is definitely a movie directed by a screenwriter, as it’s extensively wordy and probably overuses its voice-over narration device. Nevertheless, this can’t be said to get in the way of the movies’ value as a visual story, not just for the aforementioned style, but for some great imagery, beautiful shots, and one sequence that’s unexpectedly visually experimental and transporting. However the power of the film still lies in the written word and what Schrader is trying to convey. The story itself has noticeably a lot in common with Taxi Driver, including that films’ pessimistic outlook and the protagonists’ uncompromising desire to do something about a perceived great wrong in their world. But the two are cousins only, First Reformed being purely Schrader. It would be perhaps presumptuous to assume Schrader, who was brought up Calvinist, is working through his own faith-based conundrums, but the movies’ religious leanings are no accident. There’s a statement being made, a challenge being posed regarding faith and the world today. It’s also worth considering the allegorical reading that comes with a film featuring a pregnant character called Mary, and a significant off-screen character called Joseph.
I don’t dare spoil the ending, but it’s puzzling, deeply fascinating, and lastingly impressionable. It’s likely influenced by the contentious ending to Dreyer’s Ordet, but in my opinion, this one’s better. And it’s the perfect way to top off a movie that you’ll be thinking about days after seeing it. Paul Schrader didn’t make this an easy film -general audiences aren’t going to gravitate towards it at all- but he did make an immensely provocative, intense yet subdued character study and meditation on world anxieties built on richly crafted techniques and admirable influences. First Reformed may not reach a large audience, it most likely won’t be remembered come Awards season; but everyone who does see it, whether they appreciate its artistry or think it’s ostentatious, won’t soon forget it.

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