2. First Reformed

First Reformed

Director: Paul Schrader

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Cedric Kyles, Victoria Hill

I have to confess I have been a huge Ethan Hawke fan so I felt I was compelled to like it, the film really stands on its own. Ethan Hawke plays an angry and bitter minister in a small and historic upstate New York church, who directs much of his bitterness at political leaders and much of it at himself.

This is Paul Schrader’s drama about an alcoholic ex-military chaplain going through a profound existential crisis. Ethan Hawke stars as Reverend Ernst Toller of the First Reformed Church in New York in this thoughtful film, which tells the story of a church with a dwindling congregation, striving to adapt to a new age. When pregnant parishioner, played by Amanda Seyfried, asks Reverend Toller to counsel her husband, a tormented radical environmentalist who doesn’t want to bring a child into a world which climate change is poised to destroy, Toller is plunged into dealing with his own tormented past, until he finds redemption in an act of exceptional violence.

It’s been a long time since we saw another great Paul Schrader’ smovie, and with First Reformed, the writer-director provides a magnificent companion piece to that earlier triumph. Also indebted to Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Ingmar Bergman, Schrader’s religious drama) fixates on Reverend Toller ongoing crisis-of-faith is accelerated by an encounter with an environmental activist beset by hopelessness and anger. Toller’s ensuing relationship with that man’s wife as well as the leader of a local mega-church forms the basis of Schrader’s rigorously ascetic and occasionally expressionistic film, which is guided by Toller’s journal-entry narration about his fears and doubts. Formally exquisite and led by a tremendous performance from Hawke who can’t quell the darkness within, it’s a spiritual inquiry made harrowing by both its mounting misery and its climactic ambiguity. The ending, which almost veers into magical realism, is a leap of faith for the audience and characters, adding up to nothing less than the most moving shot of 2018. This is a true masterpiece I recommend everyone check out.