“First Reformed”

Vladimir Nabokov complained that there is no place in art for a Western Union messenger to deliver a work’s message. In Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” there clearly is a Western Union messenger, but he knocked off work with the message undelivered in his satchel.

We begin with the Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke), the pastor of a gift shop. Well, not exactly a gift shop: a 250-year-old clapboard New England legacy church rich in history, a waystation of antislavery’s Underground Railroad. Father Toller’s historic First Reformed Church is maintained under the aegis of a neighboring prosperous megachurch, Abundant Life. Father Toller has a handful of regular parishioners.



Ethan Hawke's Father Toller has no choir to preach to in "First Reformed" 

The First Reformed’s vicar is not a firebrand of the Old Time Religion or religious politics. He lost his only son in the Iraq war; his wife was a victim of collateral emotional damage. He labors in the vineyards of Thomas Merton, but he is not Mertonian. In his Spartan rectory, sustained by strong drink, Father Toller tells us that he has committed himself to setting down his daily thoughts by hand in a diary ‘for the period of twelve months—one year’. But Father Toller is less a contemplative than a deeply lonely man.

Diaries, even those of the most illustrious, tend to be dull, even if penned by someone with flair like the Madame du Barry. Father Toller’s earnest record is no exception. It would have been more telling to hear one of his sermons. A Father Mackenzie effort heard by a half-dozen—and a large cinema audience—would have given a much better insight into who this man is.

Amanda Seyfried as Mary in "First Reformed" 

And then Father Toller is faced with a Marian Problem. Perhaps this is an occupational hazard. Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a pregnant young woman who turns up after one of his services, asks Father Toller to have a word with her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger), an environmental activist. Michael does not want to bring a child into a world compromised by the depredations of corporate greed.

Father Toller’s long conversation with Michael is his most lucid moment in the film. He listens intelligently, and gives this morbidly fraught millennial the kind of loving, level-headed advice one might offer a son or nephew. Hawke handles this scene beautifully. However, it is unlikely that either Merton or Socrates, Basho or Lao Tzu would have had better success speaking with the young man.    

Mary subsequently discovers that Michael has a ‘suicide vest’ rigged with explosives. She reveals this piéce de resistance to Father Toller. Father Toller removes the item from the premises. Michael blows his head off with a shotgun on a nature trail.

Mounting evidence such as bloody urine indicates that Father Toller has health issues. We see him self-medicate with strong drink as he walks his personal Garden of Gethsemane and the church graveyard, and continues to commit his thoughts longhand to a composition book. 

Ethan Hawke as Father Ernst Toller in "First Reformed"

In the meantime, a ceremony celebrating First Reformed’s 250th anniversary is close at hand. The event will be attended by Father Toller and Abundant Life Pastor Joel Jeffers (Cedric Kyles), the town mayor, the governor of New York and Edward Balq (Michael Gaston), a local entrepreneur and megachurch contributor. Pastor Jeffers is a positive, responsible man who runs a large religious organization. Balq is a liberal Aunt Sally of everything wrong with the Trump administration and Republicanism as currently configured (MP does not contend that these are not target-rich environments).

Cedric [the Entertainer] Kyles as Pastor Jeffers in "First Reformed"

The plot thickens. Father Toller consoles the pregnant widow Mary in her time of grief. He has a confrontation with Balq. He is attacked verbally at a youth ministry group session by a young man armed with cookie-cutter conservative talk radio sound bites. He spitefully rejects the helping hand of Esther (Victoria Hill), a concerned local woman with whom he had been intimately involved. He contemplates the vest. Pastor Jeffers expresses concern at Father Toller’s visible distress, reminding him that there was more to Christ’s ministry than his dark night of the soul in Gethsemane.

MP shall say only that the dénouement misfires. The picture is beautifully cast, shot and acted, but unlike Saint Anthony, the pastor protagonist yields to temptation in his spiritual desert. The story’s superficial, unsatisfying grasp of the contemplative life suggests just how alien religious spirituality has become to materialist contemporary society.

Detail of Hieronymous Bosch's The Temptation of Saint Anthony

This story would have had the strongest, most effective impact by plumbing Merton or more pointedly Dietrich Bonhoeffer to speak truth to power in a concluding sermon. One thinks of great movie moments such as Paul Newman’s closing trial argument in The Verdict. Such a resolution would crown what could have been Hawke’s greatest role. It would have rewarded the audience for sitting through two hours of a Great Big Story and delivered a universal message that would have been remembered and quoted for many years to come.  

“First Reformed” 2017 U.S. (113 minutes). Written and directed by Paul Schrader; cinematography by Alexander Drynan; edited by Benjamin Rodriguez Jr.; casting by Susan Shopmaker.