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The state of our world invites us to embrace despair. The criminal inaction,
aiding and abetting, of people in power regarding the tremendous environmental
and economic crimes by conglomerates drive the world further into a situation
that a few years from now will foster a new, unsustainable existence for the
majority of people. This is the fear of Michael (Philip Ettinger) an
environmental activist released from prison after participating in a
non-violent rally. His wife, Mary (Amanda Seyfrid) is worried about him and has
invited her pastor, Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) to counsel Michael.
Michael doesn’t want to bring a child into a world that seems on the brink of
complete chaos. Reverend Toller listens to him, agrees with him regarding the
planet’s situation, but tells him that her child has as much as a right to
exist as any other creature, like plants or endangered species. He tells him
that while climate change is a recent development, what Michael feels now, the
“blackness”, has been a constant part of human experience since the beginning
of man’s capacity for reason. “Wisdom,” the pastor says, “is holding two
contradictory truths in our mind, simultaneously, Hope and despair. A life
without despair is a life without hope. Holding these two ideas in our head is
life itself.”
This sequence is
set in an early part of Paul Schrader’s astonishing masterwork First Reformed,
a film that sees the erudite screenwriter—one of cinema’s scribes most
preoccupied with spiritual malaise and the desire for redemption even for the
most wretched of men—back in shape after decades of working in, mostly,
B-movies with C-level scripts. First Reformed is pure, undiluted Schrader. His
Calvinist upbringing combined with his understanding of Catholic theology (and
even a dash of his affection for Japanese culture and cuisine) is in full
display. It’s no secret that he is influenced by Bergman, Bresson and Tarkovsky
(with whom he shares both visual style and thematic preoccupations) and by the
literary works of Mishima and Georges Bernanos, whose Diary of a Country Priest
(also a film by Bresson) is a heavy influence on the film’s structure. Despite
his attempts at helping Michael, Toller is a physician unable to heal himself.
He suffers from doubt, guilt and the inability to engage more actively with
people around him. The film opens with him starting a journal for a year, in
the hopes of strengthening his connection with God, engaging in a form of
prayer. He intends to shred and burn the diary after twelve months. However,
even this exercise, which he shares with us through voice-over, seems to be
futile. He is always unsatisfied with his writings and his descriptions. He
says that one should always be merciless when writing about oneself, but he’s
more merciless about his choice of words than in his actions.
Toller was a
former chaplain, another in a long line of soldiers. He encouraged his son to
enlist in the war in Iraq, even though he knew that the war had no moral
justification, solely so his son could continue a family tradition. This
results in his son’s death and in the end of his marriage. He finds employment
and a chance at making things better at First Reformed, a historical church in
New York that is now part of Reverend Joel Jeffers (Cedric “the Entertainer”
Kyles) religious empire. Jeffers preaches out of a Megachurch that is fully
staffed and includes a studio, a cafeteria, counselors and youth groups.
Jeffers is an erudite learner of scripture, charismatic and a canny
businessman. While Toller is relegated to doing services for a handful of
congregants and acting as a tour guide for the occasional tourist or school
group, Jeffers engages with a larger audience. What’s more, both the megachurch
and First Reformed receive the backing and help of Erik Balq (Michael Gaston), the CEO of
Balq industries, which, among other things, is also in the energy business and
is one of the top polluters in the country. He also happens to finance the
restoration and refurbishment of the First Reformed church for its 250th
anniversary.
It is in this
context that Toller’s spiritual crucible increases. Tragedy strikes into the
center of Toller’s church community and his spiritual crisis only gets worse.
Afflicted by stomach pains, Toller remains quiet about them and keeps on drinking
whiskey while writing his journal in his barely furnished bedroom. Esther
(Victoria Hill), the choir director at the megarchurch, is in love with Toller
and notices his ill-health, but Toller balks at her attempts to help him. The
only thing that seems to give him a momentary reprieve from his pains is his
relationship with Mary, seemingly of a pastoral nature, and his increasing
fixation with the environmental issues that Michael is concerned about.
Eventually, Toller starts to become consumed with these worries, and ponders
taking drastic action.
Schrader has
always concerned himself with stories about men who say little, but who are
imprisoned by overpowering obsessions, which they try to placate with
self-punishment, hard physical regiments and a wish to exert change in their
world through an act of purifying, suicidal violence. Travis Bickle in Taxi
Driver is the well-known example, but one can also see these characters in
Rolling Thunder, Raging Bull, Mishima: A life in Four Chapters. The parallels
with these previous creations are strong enough that one could also see First
Reformed as a remake of Taxi Driver, with Toller as some sort of Pastor Bickle
(there’s even a scene where Toller pours some stomach medicine into his whiskey
that is a great visual parallel with the scene where Travis stares at the
bubbles from his Alka-Seltzer). But there are aspects about this film that make
it enthralling on its own. For one, the film is very dialogical, with scenes of
theological debating that are as sharp and brutal as any action scene. There is
an undercurrent of pitch black comedy that can make one chuckle with
bitterness, especially regarding some of Toller’s halfhearted attempts at being
ingratiating with people, despite the terror that suffocates his very soul.
What’s also
astonishing about the film is how sharp Schrader’s writing and perception
regarding the state of modern political culture. The conflict in the film
centers, finally, on the moral and ethical relationship between the genuine
Christian mission and the stranglehold that American capitalism has upon its
actual delivery. While on a youth group session, one of the young men
spitefully rejects Toller’s argument against the idea that Christian
righteousness begets prosperity. The young man argues that Toller’s vision of
Christianity is a loser’s religion and begins to enumerate a serious of
reactionary American grievances: “Take prayer out of the schools. Give money to
people too lazy to work for it. And whatever you do, don't offend the Muslims.”
Toller is baffled by this, for he realizes that despite the notion of Christian
identity in America, Christian ideals regarding poverty, pacifism and meekness
are not very marketable. There are moments of great visual irony, but my
favorite takes place at the megachurch’s cafeteria. Toller and Esther sit at a
table, and behind them we see lines from Acts of the Apostles (44 All the
believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and
possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet
together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together
with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the
people) that strike quite the contrast with the notions put forth by
evangelists like Jeffers or “Pillars of the Community” like Balq. The pragmatic Jeffers scolds Toller about
being divorced with the practical side of their mission, telling him that
writers like the monk Thomas Merton spent their lives in isolation, writing
books, and not dealing with the practical realities of reaching souls. But the
reality is that the vision of Christianity that is peddled by the mainstream is
responsible for creating a world where the stewardship of the Earth is
considered a political Liberal vs Conservative ideal and where politicians and
moneymen use their money and influence to keep the religious power players
happy and the believers dormant. It’s in this scenario where Toller finally
asks, again and again, “Will God Forgive Us?”
First Reformed is a powerful, crushing experience of a film. It is a
film that invites reflection and also confronts us about what it means to be a
Christian in relation to the state of the world and how sometimes taking on the
world’s problems all by ourselves can lead to egotism that can turn violent. It
is a great film that doesn’t offer clear-cut solutions, as it should be. Just
as Toller narrates “How easily they talk about prayer, those who have never
really prayed”, sometimes what seems to be an easy task cannot be achieved
without facing down the darkness of the soul within us.
