Mark Reviews Movies: FIRST REFORMED

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 24, 2018

Wisdom, the minister says, is the ability to hold two opposing beliefs simultaneously. There's another phrase for that combative state of mind, and First Reformed finds its strength in the cognitive dissonance of its main character, its form, and its abundant ideas.

The most prominent case of dissonance in writer/director Paul Schrader's film is that it's the story about a man of faith, who is suffering a crisis of faith, but that the story itself isn't exactly about faith. Religion, it appears, has become a crutch for Rev. Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke). If he was devout in his religious beliefs at any point in his life, that devotion long since has left him.

Here is a man, quite ill and still in mourning for the life he once had, who begins the film's story by starting a journal. He will keep it for a year, adding a new entry every night, and the information he provides will be brutally honest about his thoughts, his experiences, and his feelings.

What we learn of Toller's inner thoughts is at odds with the exterior face he puts out to the world. He hasn't been able to pray in some time. Maybe this 12-month exercise will help him rediscover how to pray. Maybe it is a kind of prayer in and of itself. If all of his other rationalizations aren't true, then perhaps the attempt to pray is a form of praying.

To the pastor's congregation and his fellow faith ministers at a much larger church, he has a lot of comforting words and Scripture passages and theological points to offer—all of them stated with the confidence of a man who appears to possess at least some of the important answers. Within the sparse and dimly lit space of his bedroom adjoining the church, though, he drinks to blot out the pain of his rapidly deteriorating body and to ease the suffering of his doubt-filled mind.

Toller exists as a paradox, and in this world of extremism and environmental decay and divisive politics, he is simply part of the noise. That the pastor tries to present himself as being above it all is likely his primary crutch. The story is of him deciding if he should kick away that crutch—to keep living a lie or to stumble to whatever end his life is taking him. Is it better to pretend to have the answers or, as horrible as they may be, to find the real ones? Are there even any answers to find?

Schrader's ambitions here are quite large. The film is, in parts and among other things, an examination of how a person may be drawn toward extremism, a political screed about environmentalism, and a study of faith's role in daily life. It's also about none of those things, really, because the focus is squarely on the central character. Schrader doesn't become caught up in psychoanalysis, speeches, or theologizing. He simply presents Toller as he is, allowing us to see the man in crisis, to figure out how he became this way, and, finally, to speculate about his ultimate fate. Toller's nature, like matters of faith and how to deal with seemingly unstoppable devastation of the planet, is a riddle that cannot be answered.

The minister, though, is expected to have those answers. He's presented with a significant challenge when Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a member of his church's congregation, asks him to speak with her husband. He's Michael (Philip Ettinger), an environmental activist whose mood has worsened since learning that Mary is pregnant. Michael is convinced that it would be immoral—an unforgiveable sin—to bring a child into a world that he knows is destined for destruction. It's yet another riddle—another paradox.

The two men talk at the couple's house, and over the course of the conversation, Schrader shows how adept he is at juggling multiple narrative and thematic concerns within the frame of a fairly simple, straightforward scene. On the face of it, there's the actual moral and spiritual debate over Michael's dilemma. That's fascinating enough, especially since both men are more than competent at presenting their arguments.

We also learn about Toller's past. He was married and had a son. The son died in Iraq, after the pastor convinced him to continue his family's legacy of military service. That ultimately ended the marriage, bringing Toller to this small but historic church in upstate New York.

Beneath this debate and these details, though, there's the other level of Toller's true feelings by way of his journal. Here is a moment that rekindles his love of religion—"like Jacob wrestling the angel," he says. Toller finally appears to have a victory for himself and for his life's work.

What follows, though, repeatedly shatters that sense of fulfillment. The rest of the film follows Toller as he slides deeper and deeper into despair for himself, the church, and the world. Of some import are his relationship with the public-relations savvy pastor (played by Cedric Kyle) of a much larger church, which financially supports Toller's parish, as well as Toller's introduction to the owner (played by Michael Gaston) of an energy company that helps to fill the bigger church's coffers. There's also the way that Mary transforms into an ideal for humanity for Toller, even as the reverend begins to consider that human life might not be worth the trouble.

It's a harrowing study of this man's life, portrayed in claustrophobic compositions, which subtly reveal the character's underlying motives and some hefty contradictions (A serene walk in the woods reveals a scene of horrific violence that seems unthinkable amidst such silence). Hawke's precisely tuned performance is vital. There's a decent, Everyman charm to the surface Hawke's Toller, and we can follow each step as the character falls into existential anguish, until he's simply a shell of some twisted mix-up of environmental and religious fanaticism—repressing the sound of his primal howls by shoving his overcoat into his mouth.

First Reformed doesn't provide any answers, unless one considers the lack of answers to be an answer (The sound and imagery of the final shot suggest Toller's favored paradox—hope and despair—without explicating which, if either, wins). That might be the only resolution we can expect for this character, as well as the world that he neither loves nor hates but, in the end, he knows will give him the destruction he wants and fears.

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