Adam Graham Detroit News Film Critic It's been a long journey for Paul Schrader, the screenwriter who gave us American classics such as "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull" and "American Gigolo." In recent years, the Grand Rapids-born filmmaker also delivered a string of not-so-classics such as the tawdry and embarrassing Lindsay Lohan vehicle "The Canyons" and the Nic Cage clunker "Dog Eat Dog," both of which he directed. It was fair to think Schrader's best work was far in the rearview, and he would ride off as a once-vital talent who faded into the sunset. Now comes "First Reformed," which Schrader wrote and directed, and it shows a raging fire still burns deep within the 71-year-old. "First Reformed" is a passionate, unnerving and almost unbearably tense drama about faith, conviction and the rotting core of life on our planet. It's the Schrader many hoped was still alive and kicking but doubted we would ever see again. What a comeback. Ethan Hawke, in what could be his defining role (somebody please get this man an Oscar! ), plays Toller, a former military chaplain who runs the First Reformed Church, the oldest church in Albany County, New York. The church is mostly a relic, a monument to the past, respected in the community but pish-poshed as a "souvenir shop" by the locals. Most of the town attends the glitzy megachurch across the street, run by Pastor Jeffers (Cedric the Entertainer, billed by his birth name, Cedric Kyles, in a rare straight role). But with First Reformed's 250th anniversary on the horizon, Toller will preside over its splashy reconsecration ceremony. Toller is keeping a longhand journal to chronicle his thoughts for one full year. It's a journey of self-reflection, of opening up and giving himself a cold, uncompromising look in the mirror, embracing his past and what it portends for the future. We learn he was father to a son who died in combat in Iraq. Now Toller drinks whiskey for breakfast, which he chases with heavy helpings of Pepto Bismol. Toller is introduced to the pregnant Mary (Amanda Seyfried, who is magnificent), who wants him to sit down with her husband, Michael (Philip Ettinger). Michael is having doubts about impending fatherhood, tied to his radical environmentalist views and his fears of bringing up a child given the state of the world today. Toller attempts to set him straight, but it's evident he has his own fears and lacks conviction in his message. Belief, doubt, hope, fear, greed, mercy, activism: Schrader takes these elements and creates a stirring, caustic drama whose tension is stoked by an ominous score built on rumbling waves of bass. The film is framed in a tight, square-boxed aspect ratio that gives it a feeling of rare intimacy, and it is spartan in the efficiency of its details. Nothing is introduced that shouldn't be there. Hawke, at 47 still finding new depths to explore in his characters, does astonishing work, baring the wounded, conflicted soul of his man of faith. He and Schrader are a remarkable duo. "First Reformed" takes some wild, unexpected and uncomfortable turns in its final act that will surely shock some, anger others and disturb just about everyone. For Schrader, it shows that he's still got it. Welcome back. agraham@detroitnews.com (313) 222-2284 'First Reformed' GRADE: A- Rated R for some disturbing violent images Running time: 113 minutes<doc-sep>What a strange path I have had to take to find you. Roughly translated, those are the last words in Robert Bresson’s “Pickpocket,” a movie that figures prominently in the work of Paul Schrader, who has alluded to its final scene in many of his films, including “American Gigolo,” “Light Sleeper” and his new one, “First Reformed.” A tortuous spiritual journey through debasement and self-deception leads, in the end, to an experience of communion, the discovery of another soul who had been there all along, awaiting recognition. Which is more or less how I feel — improbably, miraculously, at long last — about Mr. Schrader. He is 71, and has had a long and varied career, but “First Reformed” nonetheless feels like a fresh discovery. More than that: an epiphany. A first-rate cinema intellectual — as a 24-year-old graduate student he wrote “Transcendental Style in Film,” a study of Bresson, Yasujiro Ozu and Carl Dreyer that is still worth reading (and has just been reissued) — Mr. Schrader has been, to put it mildly, an uneven filmmaker. A certain studiousness afflicts even his most accomplished work as a screenwriter and director, a tendency to put his erudition ahead of his instincts. “First Reformed,” with its evident debt to Dreyer and Bresson (most obviously “Diary of a Country Priest”), might seem to follow in this vein, but it works through its influences to achieve an uncanny directness. It is the portrait of a soul in torment, all the more powerful for being so rigorously conceived and meticulously executed.<doc-sep>I could never have watched Paul Schrader’s First Reformed dispassionately. Like Schrader, I was raised in a strict Christian community and didn’t watch movies until I was in my late teens, something that fundamentally shaped how I approach film today. I’ve also spent a lot of my adulthood thinking and writing about religion and transcendence in film, and decades ago, Schrader literally wrote the book on that topic. And then he went and made a movie about a minister in a small church, working in the shadow of a much larger megachurch, who plummets into a dark night of the soul brought on partly by a growing feeling that what he’s believed and taught all his life isn’t a sufficient answer for the struggles of the world in which he lives. And if that wasn’t enough, Schrader set the film in upstate New York, in Albany County, where I was born and raised — a chilly and gray place much of the year, and an area pollsters consistently rank among the least Christian regions in America. So yes, for me watching First Reformed — first last autumn at the Toronto Film Festival, and then again a few weeks ago — was one of those experiences that critics rarely have, of feeling like a movie was made specifically for me. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy for me to put it into words. Rating: 5 out of 5 vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark Critics have rightly declared First Reformed to be one of the year’s best American films. Featuring a stunning performance from Ethan Hawke, it lingers uneasily in the subconscious. Furious and darkly funny, it’s a tight, explosive encapsulation of our very specific moment in history, and one that brings both the physical and metaphysical into the picture as it considers what could be the future. And it dares to wonder aloud whether we’ll be forgiven for ushering it in. First Reformed ably dramatizes a church struggling for its life in the shadow of a megachurch Reverend Toller, played with chilling, muted, disintegrating fury by Hawke, is the minister of a small church maintained more for its historical significance — once a stop on the Underground Railroad, it’s about to celebrate its 250th anniversary — than its thriving ministry. In an accurate but obvious metaphor, it’s surrounded by a graveyard with crumbling, toppling headstones. The bigger church nearby, Abundant Life, is where it’s all happening. Abundant Life isn’t a “megachurch” by the standards of some regions in the US — it boasts a “mere” 5,000 seats. But in upstate New York, that counts as quite large, and it’s in stark contrast with First Reformed, which has about 10 people in attendance on a good Sunday. Abundant Life has roomy offices, a youth choir, cushioned maroon pews, many staff members, a corporate-sponsored media production center, and a cafeteria with a passage from the biblical book of Acts printed on the wall. And it’s led by Pastor Jeffers who, in an inspired bit of meta-casting and barbed commentary on the modern evangelical church, is played by Cedric the Entertainer. In a device that mimics Robert Bresson’s 1951 film Diary of a Country Priest, which Schrader’s film draws on structurally and thematically, Jeffers serves as a kind of mentor and guardian angel for Toller and for First Reformed. The smaller church’s budget comes mostly from Abundant Life, and when they need something, whether it’s organ repairs or plumbing, the larger church is there to help. Toller is grateful for the help, of course, and for the job, especially since Jeffers offered it to him in the wake of his son’s death in Iraq and his divorce. But it’s clear that it also feels a tad insulting and more than a tad patronizing to Toller that Abundant Life knows First Reformed can’t support itself. In America, where churches abound, the mark of successful ministry — and, implicitly, a minister’s effectiveness at the job — is a growing, financially comfortable congregation. And given that the evangelical brand of American Christianity to which Abundant Life seems to belong is deeply dependent on the appeal of its head pastor to attract congregants, First Reformed’s dwindling congregation reflects badly on Toller. Not everyone prefers Abundant Life’s comfortable, cheery brand, though. A young woman named Mary (Amanda Seyfried) attends First Reformed with her husband, Michael (Philip Ettinger), an environmental activist who was discharged from prison on compassionate leave because Mary is several months pregnant. They attend First Reformed partly because Michael thinks Abundant Life is “more of a company than a church,” as Mary tells Toller. Mary is the religious one in the couple, but she asks Toller if he’d meet with Michael, who wants her to have an abortion rather than bring a child into a world where he sees only impending environmental apocalypse. Toller obliges. At Mary and Michael’s house, the two men talk about compassion and life, about God’s love and the confusion of the world, and agree to meet again. But Toller’s health is failing in all ways — bodily, emotionally, and spiritually. He begins keeping a diary as an “experiment,” in which, he tells us in voiceover, he will confide to God every morning. “When it is possible,” he clarifies. “When he is listening.” And after his meeting with Michael, things don’t get better. They get worse. As First Reformed’s 250th-anniversary celebration approaches, Toller’s mood grows darker. He drinks more and starts to lose the ability to deal with anyone — especially Esther (Victoria Hill), a choir director at Abundant Life with whom he had a past relationship, whose persistent inquiries after his well-being disgust him. Toller is headed for a breakdown, or maybe an epiphany, and when it comes, it turns the whole measured, austere film on its ear. First Reformed is about fear in an era of extremisms One afternoon at the Abundant Life youth group, a teen erupts into a startling and familiar-sounding rant against “political correctness,” seemingly out of nowhere. Toller later tells Jeffers about it, saying that “there’s just no middle ground with these kids — everything is so extreme.” “These are frightening times,” Jeffers says, by way of explanation. “These kids, they want certainty. Don’t think. Follow.” But it’s our very certainty, the film suggests, that may damn us in the end. First Reformed seems presciently poised for 2018’s frightening times, though there are no overt references to the era of Trump. American culture in 2018 fosters extremisms of all sorts, and First Reformed does not blink away from them. It understands, in rare and terrifying way, the mental toll of feeling like either an exile or a dangerous apostate within one’s faith community, alienated both from a caring God and from the platitudes that seem to satisfy others in the pews — of becoming convinced that if you’re not frightened then you’re purposely shutting yourself off from reality. It knows the special existential terror of trying to pray without being sure that God is listening, in a world where the nonexistence of God seems just as plausible as the alternative. In this respect, First Reformed would pair well with Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film Silence — no surprise, since Scorsese and Schrader have a long association. Schrader wrote Taxi Driver, which Scorsese directed, and Scorsese also declared Diary of a Country Priest to be an influence on Taxi Driver, which, like First Reformed, leans on its main character’s narration. Schrader has said that he had half an inkling to make Silence himself when it looked like Scorsese might never manage to pull it off. Maybe with First Reformed, he has. Not that this film is a clone of Scorsese’s — Silence is set in the 17th century and focuses on two Portuguese Jesuit priests on a mission to Japan, whereas First Reformed is contemporary, set in upstate New York, among Protestants. And while Silence is powerful and elegiac, First Reformed, though smaller in scope — it’s more of a chamber piece than Scorsese’s sweeping epic — packs a punch that might be the more bruising of the two for its concentrated force.<doc-sep>
This review discusses plot points from First Reformed, including a brief mention of the film's final scenes. The plot of First Reformed is relatively straightforward. Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke), an ill preacher who finds himself unable to communicate with God following the death of his son and the dissolution of his marriage, attempts to help radical environmentalist Michael (Phillip Ettinger) find a reason to celebrate bringing a child into the world following the revelation that his girlfriend, Mary (Amanda Seyfried), is pregnant. Michael's extremism rubs off on Toller, who begins to wonder if God can forgive us for the harm we've done to the planet—or our inaction in the face of said despoliation. Paul Schrader's direction is simple, yet exacting. Framed in a boxier 1.37:1 aspect ratio and focused on facial reactions in a way that calls to mind the work of early filmmakers such as Dreyer and Bresson, every moment of First Reformed feels perfectly framed and precisely lit, every shot designed to convey the film's ideas and concerns. Following—intermixed with, almost—the opening credits, the initial thing we see in First Reformed is a crucifix atop a church, dimly lit. So dimly, in fact, that it seems at first to be a ghost image, an after-effect burned onto the screen from a previous showing, perhaps. An optical illusion, maybe. As the light increases, the church comes into focus and the cross grows brighter. But this is a faith that has dimmed. Following Rev. Toller's conversion to Michael's cause—during his conspiratorial lecture, Michael is surrounded by hockey stick charts and computer graphs showing the warming of the planet; his ravings are replete with wide-eyed warnings of starvation and floods and plagues and locusts—we see the church again, at night. But this time it is lit in a way that obscures the steeple and the cross atop it. Rev. Toller may continue to speak of God, but he has been converted from Christianity to environmental evangelism. Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman suggested that Schrader's use of environmentalism in First Reformed is a bit of radical chic, a progressive sentiment designed to earn sympathy and plaudits from like-minded critics. The term may have been on his mind because of Tom Wolfe's passing, but it doesn't really fit. As Joseph Epstein noted after Wolfe's death, the phrase "was a perfect description of the behavior of an upper class with nothing at risk cultivating fashionable progressive opinions to reinforce its own self-esteem. … The point about the phenomenon was that it was risk-free." If anything, First Reformed strikes me as a stinging condemnation of radical environmentalism, a warning against the dangers of replacing the light of the church with the darkness of an apocalyptic cult. It shows such beliefs as anything but risk-free: By the film's end, Rev. Toller is strapping on a suicide vest and planning to blow up not only his church but also its congregants (including a wealthy industrialist who has funded the restoration of the church). That Toller turns from this path at the last moment, choosing love over hateful hopelessness, and that Schrader drives home the wisdom of that turn by adopting a shocking stylistic adjustment—shifting from staid compositions to wild, joyous movement right before the credits roll—for the film's final shot, only reinforces the suggestion that First Reformed is in fact deeply critical of radical despair. Filmworker is about another man who gives himself over to a cause. This one, however, is quite non-fictional: Leon Vitali, one of the stars of Barry Lyndon, served as Stanley Kubrick's amanuensis from the time he worked on The Shining until the great director's death in 1999 and beyond, attempting to guarantee that Eyes Wide Shut‘s release was as close to Kubrick's vision as possible and obsessively working on DVD re-releases to ensure that the discs resembled how Kubrick wanted the films to look. Vitali is interviewed along with executives and filmmakers and actors who knew or worked with or simply admired Kubrick. These conversations are spliced between footage from Kubrick's films and from Vitali's non-Kubrick performances. An up-and-coming British actor who Filmworker leads us to believe was popular with both the serious set (he is a classically trained Shakespearean actor) and the Tiger Beat crew (he sports a mop top and a come-hither grin for photo spreads in teen mags), Vitali gave up acting to become Kubrick's full-time assistant. But "assistant" doesn't really give the full sense of his job. Vitali's duties went far beyond simply making calls and taking notes.