Review of First Reformed
**** out of five stars
(Currently showing at the Celebration! Cinema Grand Rapids Woodland)
Paul Schrader, the writer/director from Grand Rapids, has been making movies since the early 70s. Despite being forbidden to see movies by his religious conservative parents (sneaking out to see his first film, The Absent-minded Professor, at the age of 17), he has produced numerous great American films and written extensive literary film criticism.
Before leaving Michigan for a film career in Los Angeles, he earned a B.A. from Calvin College, and with a minor in theology, codified his religious education, and gave bottomless depth to his well of spiritual angst.
Out of this childhood deeply steeped in Dutch Calvinist principles, his films, from Taxi Driver to Raging Bull to Mishima, have, at their core, men suffering from existential conflicts. Overwhelmingly frustrated and hopeless victims of forces, societal, political and spiritual, and unable to connect with others on any meaningful level, they opt instead for self destructive, violent, cathartic solutions.
They find fleeting solace, brief respite in giving in to temptations, their appetites, by numbing their pain through drink, pornography, even occasional bursts of anger. Yet all the while seething with inward rage, which inevitably turns outward in explosive acts of retribution against their perceived wrongdoers.
In First Reformed, Ethan Hawke, as the Reverend Toller, diligently, and oh so pastorally, tends to the very small flock of church members who still attend services, and the occasional accidental tourist, at the 250-year-old First Reformed Church, now also a museum of sorts owing to its historical role as part of the Underground Railroad. Meanwhile, Pastor Jeffers (Cedric “the Entertainer” Kyles) of the nearby mega-church Abundant Life frets about the arrangements for the 250th anniversary celebration which is being financially supported and closely monitored by the local millionaire industrialist Edward Balq.
Toller is approached by parishioner Mary (Amanda Seyfried) who asks him to counsel her husband, Michael,, an environmental activist, who wants her to terminate her pregnancy rather than bring their child into this polluted, climate changing, world. The Reverend does meet with the young man and tries to convince him to have hope for the future and faith in God.
But, weighed with his own lingering grief and depression over the wartime death of his son in Iraq, the breakup of his marriage as a result of that loss, and his failing health, most likely due to his drinking, he begins a deeper descent into despair after revelations from Michael.
Several people, including Pastor Jeffers and his assistant Esther, try to confront, and console Toller, but, in true alcoholic fashion, he rebukes them, and denies he is in need of any help. His increasing obsession with industrial polluters, one in particular very close to church and home, and his sense of betrayal from those in whom he believed, appears to be leading him to the inevitable Schrader explosive act of retribution in God’s name and for Mother Earth.
Schrader has painted in dimly lit interiors a portrait of a true believer suffering for his faith in God, having lost his faith in Man. Hawke acts superbly with a smoldering intensity as the torn soul wanting to keep his faith yet also to know happiness while still of this mortal coil.
Be prepared to forgive the filmmaker’s flights of surreal metaphor and the film’s abrupt conclusion, and focus instead on the truly existential questions of faith and action that are raised, and are what really matter.
This film is a fitting bookend to a master filmmaker’s career, as a complement to its fellow on the earliest end of the shelf, Taxi Driver.
I’m a Paul Schrader fan, and look forward to seeing this one. I remember when he was filming in GR. The working title of the movie he was making was The Pilgrim. It was released as Hardcore. My wife and I like to use captions, so we often watch movies at home. I’ll see if I can find Mishima while I wait. Calvin College not only produced Paul Schrader, but also the great writer Peter DeVries. Thanks for the excellently done review.