First Reformed (2018)

I had not actually seen a trailer for First Reformed until after I saw the movie. I had read a review of the film and thought it sounded interesting, I find that movies that take the subject of religion seriously are rare and generally worth seeking out. I was surprised by First Reformed and found it took some directions I was not expecting it to take, so you may or may not want to watch the trailer (or even read this review, though I'll keep spoilers to a minimum) because you'll have a different experience of the movie if you go in mostly unaware.

I tend to think of the film as having two parts, the first was more what I was expecting, the 2nd was not. Roughly the first half or so of the movie has an awful lot in common with one of my all time favorite films, the 1963 Bergman masterpiece Winter Light. The two films share so many central elements that Paul Schrader's film is obviously intended as homage. Both films center on pastors of small congregations in the snowy north of their countries. Both pastors wives are gone, in Winter Light through death, in First Reformed through divorce. Both pastors are in existential crises, both have had affairs with women in there congregations, both of these women look alike and are more interested in the pastor then he is in them, and in each case the pastor kind of hates the woman. Both pastors are called upon by women in their congregations to provide council for husbands who have become obsessed with a pending end of the world, in Winter Light that concern centers on the prospect of nuclear war, in First Reformed ecological disaster through corporate greed and short sightedness. In both films the pastors do not feel themselves up to the task, though they still try.

If you look at the credits of First Reformed's writer and director Paul Schrader you will find the subject of obsession, both religious and secular to be probably his most consistent cinematic theme in both his writing and his directing over 40 years, Obsession (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The Mosquito Coast (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), The Comfort of Strangers (1990), Autofocus (2002), even Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005). However the film that First Reformed is most often compared to here is Taxi Driver (1976), and if you are familiar with that film the reasons for this will be made obvious in the viewing of this one. While psychological portrait is central to what this film is, and Ethan Hawke in the lead reminded me just what an underpriced actor he is, the film is also a eulogy for the decline of religious faith in American life.

Hawke's Rev. Ernst Toller is the pastor of First Reformed Church in Snowbridge, New York, a pre-revolutionary war structure gearing up for its 250th anniversary, and long of more interest as a "tourist church" then a place of spiritual community. Even the associated Abundant Life Church, more modern and evangelical in its sensibility, sports an anemic youth choir, and though we only see it on weekdays seems more then anything like a business far past its peak. The religious interest of many in the film seems mundane and work a day, and those really struggling for meaning, including the pastor, seem to have a hard time finding it in faith.

A gorgeously stark film, imitating Bergman's cinematography of quite nature shots, long head and upper torso shots (which have an oddly haunting effect on a big screen), and playing unusually long stretches of conversation out with minimal camera movement. The score often has the quality of an electrical hum, at first almost subliminal but building. The sense of mounting tension and dread to the piece is magnificent. Amanda Seyfried and Cedric (The Entertainer) Kyles are also quite excellent in supporting parts, each understated in their own way. First Reformed is not the kind of movie you expect to see in the summer, to me it was perhaps the greatest experience of cinematic surprise I've had in a theater all year. It left me a little dumbstruck.  ****