For 40 years, Paul Schrader has created art that depicts often ugly truths about the world around us.
Whether as a writer (Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ) or as a director (Hardcore, American Gigolo, Cat People, Affliction), Schrader has never shied away from difficult, often dangerous topics and characters.
In recent years, however, his career has taken a beating. I may be the one and only fan of 2013’s The Canyons — yes, the Lindsay Lohan movie — that some critics felt was proof that Schrader had lost his edge for good, but to me it still crackled with his signature verve.
Now, five years later, Schrader is back with First Reformed, and if this proves to be one of the 71-year-old’s last films, it’s a damn fine reminder of just how good he can be.
Set in upstate New York, First Reformed finds Schrader still raging, albeit with the volume turned down low. This is a somber, hushed processional befitting its main character, Rev. Toller (a magnetic Ethan Hawke, who should be remembered come awards season).
Toller has been gifted oversight of the tiny First Reformed church, which is more of a tourist destination than a house of worship. A handful of parishioners still come to hear Toller preach, but his days are filled giving tours and showing off the secret passageway in the sanctuary that helped further the Underground Railroad or visiting the nearby megachurch, Abundant Life, which is run by the inscrutable Pastor Jeffers (Cedric Kyles, no longer using ‘the Entertainer’).
That is, until one day when Mary (Amanda Seyfried) asks Toller to speak to her husband, Michael. Mary is pregnant, but Michael wants her to abort the baby because of how awful the outside world has become. Michael is also an environmental activist obsessed with the daily destruction of the planet.
Toller has his own baggage. A former military man, he pushed his son to enlist only to have his boy killed in combat in Iraq. His wife left him not long after. Toller now lives a near-spartan existence. His only allowances that viewers see are a constant bottle of whiskey and a journal, which Toller explains in a voiceover, that he intends to write in every day for an entire year before destroying.
Schrader’s point here may be blunt, but it’s effective. It’s not the words written in the journal that matter, it’s the exercise itself, the discipline to follow through once a course of action is decided.
As he counsels Michael, Toller also absorbs some of the fear and paranoia gripping Mary’s husband. Or maybe he just opens his eyes in a way that his own inner demons had not allowed for some time. It’s clear that a rage sits just under the surface of his skin, likely born of guilt and shame, but slowly that anger focuses on the injustices being done by others more than the injustices he’s inflicted upon himself. And then it metastasizes.
Toller discovers a connection between one of Michael’s main targets, an environmentally unfriendly company named after its founder, Ed Balq (the always-sharp Michael Gaston), and Abundant Life. Balq is a big-money contributor to the megachurch, so much so that he’s basically bankrolling the 250th-anniversary “re-consecration” ceremony planned at First Reformed.
As Toller seethes and wrestles with his newfound knowledge, Schrader slowly breaks the man apart. Not only is his faith slumped in a corner, disoriented, like a punch-drunk boxer, but his health is failing due to his steady diet of booze and little else.
The only bright spot in his life is Mary, with whom he shares a noticeable spark, and Schrader showcases their chemistry during a remarkable sequence in which Toller imagines they are floating through space together, looking down upon the planet, until his joyous epiphany devolves into a series of destructive images highlighting the cruel and vicious ways mankind is killing Earth.
Toller makes a decision, based in part on a discovery that Mary made, which she shared with him, which I won’t spoil here, to make a stand and a statement at his church’s “re-consecration” celebration.
It’s a brave choice by Schrader. In the span of a few minutes, viewers watch a mesmerizing Hawke cycle through a host of emotions as his body becomes a shifting canvas of religious and extremist symbolism.
There’s no denying just how good Hawke is as Toller. In a career marked by flawless performances and standout characters, this is a massive achievement.
And there’s no arguing that Schrader is touching upon a condition that many people are currently experiencing — a frustration born of our country’s inexplicable lack of common sense and decency.
We now live in a world where lies are freely disseminated without consequence; where domestic terrorists spouting hate and division are forgiven and protected; where cash-swollen conglomerates are allowed to do as they please, regardless of the impact on our planet.
First Reformed is a challenging work and a powerful allegory about our country’s current climate. While I didn’t love it overall, I respect it and I hope it sparks some much-needed discussion.
There’s a little Rev. Toller in a lot more of us than we’re probably willing to admit. How that manifests, whether in sacrifice, sanctimony or salvation, remains to be seen.
John W. Allman has spent more than 25 years as a professional journalist and writer, but he’s loved movies his entire life. Good movies, awful movies, movies that are so gloriously bad you can’t help but champion them. Since 2009, he has cultivated a review column and now a website dedicated to the genre films that often get overlooked and interviews with cult cinema favorites like George A. Romero, Bruce Campbell and Dee Wallace. Contact him at bloodviolenceandbabes.com, on Facebook or on Twitter.
This article appears in Jun 7-14, 2018.