Review: First Reformed (2017)

written and directed by Paul Schrader

First Reformed (2017)
written and directed by Paul Shrader

Rev. Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) is a supremely lonely pastor of a tiny New England church since his child died and his wife left him, installed there by a gregarious pastor of a much larger, prosperous modern church. His few parishioners include a young couple: Michael, a troubled man in full climate-change panic (Philip Ettinger) and his frightened wife Mary (Amanda Seyfried). When Michael meets with Toller, the pastor does a good job of counseling him, but you can see that the young man is circling the drain, and when he kills himself, the viewer is unsurprised.

The larger church, led by an effusive pastor played by Cedric Kyles (aka "Cedric the Entertainer") is planning a flashy celebration of the tiny church's 250th anniversary. The governor will attend, as will a millionaire named Balq (Michael Gaston) who is the largest donor and the underwriter of the shindig. After Michael's suicide, Toller's haunted by the activist's angst over the climate. He's also inherited a suicide vest that Michael had fashioned and never got the chance to use. Ignoring staff at the church who are concerned about his health, which we see decline as he becomes ever more feverishly possessed by Michael's demons, he plans to use the vest to kill everyone during the anniversary service.

Paul Shrader makes films about terrified, haunted men. This is one of his best, because Toller is one of Shrader's most believable, sympathetic protagonists. He seems to be doing a good job, but his perspective is seriously out of whack. He neglects his own health; he seems to think that his suffering must be redemptive, or at least meaningful in some way. His boss points out that he's overdoing it, even for a Calvinist: "God doesn't want our suffering," he pleads.

But neither the senior pastor nor a woman on staff named Esther (Victoria Hill), with whom Toller once had an affair, can get through to him. The only one who can get him out of his deep, deep hole is Mary, the activist's widow. She saves him, but only at the end of a long sequence in which this humane spiritual drama becomes a horror film with ominous music, scenes of environmental destruction, and extremely dark interior scenes which match Toller's own interior.

I admired much about this movie. The script is well formed and illuminates the theological and spiritual issues clearly. Ethan Hawke's performance is really good, and the script treats all the characters with respect. Well, maybe not the millionaire guy -- you can see he's a bastard, and you're a little bit down with Toller's plan to murder him, if only he could figure out a way to do it without killing all the others. Overkill is the dominant theme: the global destruction of environmental disaster, the Calvinist predeliction to be dour and unhappy. In contrast, the love that saves Toller and Mary is simple, but by the end of this movie we'll take any positive way out.