Movie Review: First Reformed (English)

Paul Schrader's provocative drama First Reformed would pair very well with Martin Scorsese's Silence, another faith-in-crisis movie that puts the protagonist through an emotional and mental wringer. No surprise, since Schrader wrote Taxi Driver, which Scorsese directed. As a story about a former military chaplain turned custodian of a small Dutch Reformed church at the moral crossroads of religion, faith and radicalism, First Reformed is not an easy watch. Not only does it revel in its austere, elegant restraint, the starkness is spread over other aspects of filmmaking (cinematography, music) too. And we soon learn why. Rev. Ernst Toller, the pastor in question, is a troubled man beneath all that calm he exudes. Ever haunted by his decision to send his son to Iraq, where he gets killed in action, and the collapse of his marriage in the tragedy's wake, he denies himself of all the pleasures in life. Except drinking, compounding his health problems.

Things take a turn for the worse when he is visited by Mary, a heavily pregnant parishioner, asking him if he'd meet with Michael, her husband and firebrand eco-activist who wants her to abort their child because he sees no point in bringing a child into a world that's on the verge of an environmental apocalypse. The talk, as one would expect, does not go well and in its bloody aftermath, Toller finds himself influenced more by Michael's bleak outlook of the future, increasingly tormented over the thoughts that he has been desperately trying to keep at bay, eventually pushing him over the edge and forcing him to take the matters in his own hands, potentially to horrifying extremes. Ethan Hawke puts forth a sterling performance as a loner whose internal anguish threatens to implode in ways unimaginable, at the same time beautifully capturing Toller's route to spiritual breakdown and his grapplings with guilt and retribution. Brutal, punishing and incendiary, First Reformed's existential drama is a cinematic whirlwind that will leave you both stimulated and emotionally spent.