First Reformed (15.)
Directed by Paul Schrader.
Starring Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Philip Ettinger, Cedric Kyles, Michael Gaston, Victoria Hill. 113 mins.
Paul Schrader is the earnest little boy who ran away from a strict Calvinist upbringing to become a Hollywood degenerate. On and off screen he has devoted himself to sex and drugs and violence, but he has never been able to shake the twisting vines of spiritual austerity. Here he addresses it with this winter's tale of Rev Toller (Hawke), a pastor in an old, sparsely attended church who finds his faith, or his ways of expressing his faith, shaken by an encounter with a radical environmentalist parishioner.
Before becoming a scriptwriter and filmmaker (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, American Gigolo) he wrote the book Transcendental Style In Film: Ozu, Bresson and Dreyer, a study of three giants who made simple, quiet films that resonated with larger themes. It's a style he'd always admired but never attempted, until now. He told his star, Ethan Hawke, it was the film he had avoided making his whole life. The opening is so austere that for a moment it looks like the film might be in black and white. There's a simple shot of the First Reformed church, a no thrills property in the Dutch Colonial style. The credits are written in a 1940s style and the picture is in the old 4:3 ratio. In this boxy frame, the film generates considerable static tension. The image is always sparse and simple. The first meeting between Toller and the environmentalist Michael (Ettinger) is a ten-minute conversation.
But old habits die hard. Toller is writing a journal, has problems with his stomach, drinks a lot and is looking for a way to express his torment, much like Travis in Schrader's most famous script Taxi Driver. Maybe this is the film Schrader has spent four decades avoiding re-writing. The script also has a modern day re-working of Chekhov maxims about the gun that appears in the first act, only this time it's a suicide vest. After a buttoned-down first hour, the film starts to flirt with the Gothic and from out of nowhere a bizarre Kenrusselqatsi sequence is sprung upon us, a frantic hallucinatory montage of contemporary spiritual and environmental woes, in a style reminiscent of Altered States and Geoffrey Reggio's trilogy of quick quick slow tracts on man's destruction of the planet. The film now seems to be testing the audience's resolve to stick with it, and some couldn't avoid the giggles.
Hawke is full on in a role where he has to give as little as possible and he keeps you committed to it. The film's assertion that the extremities in contemporary public discourse are rooted in a knowledge that our planet is dying is really thought-provoking, but though the film is a unique and intense experience that is being pushed as the last roar of a great film master, I wasn't wholly convinced. (With all due respect, when did Schrader become that? Mishima is one of my favourite films but his track record is nowhere near the level of his legend: his last films were The Canyons and Dog Eat Dog.)
What struck me most was an unease I feel whenever film, or any other media, try to address modern-day concerns – environmental, social media, extremism, terrorism, etc. They just don't seem to have means to do it. It's a little like the awkward late 60s/ early 70s attempts to address the hippy movemnt but the disconnect seems much wider now. Perhaps that why there is so much escapism in the movies; they just haven't found the vocabulary to deal with the world as it is so fall back on what they know. Good on him for trying, but there is something rather quaint about Schrader attempting to deal with extremism, suicide bombing, environmental, social division with his simple, little, troubled priest film. I think we are still trying to process the 21st century through 20-century forms.
Directed by Paul Schrader.
Starring Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Philip Ettinger, Cedric Kyles, Michael Gaston, Victoria Hill. 113 mins.
Paul Schrader is the earnest little boy who ran away from a strict Calvinist upbringing to become a Hollywood degenerate. On and off screen he has devoted himself to sex and drugs and violence, but he has never been able to shake the twisting vines of spiritual austerity. Here he addresses it with this winter's tale of Rev Toller (Hawke), a pastor in an old, sparsely attended church who finds his faith, or his ways of expressing his faith, shaken by an encounter with a radical environmentalist parishioner.
Before becoming a scriptwriter and filmmaker (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, American Gigolo) he wrote the book Transcendental Style In Film: Ozu, Bresson and Dreyer, a study of three giants who made simple, quiet films that resonated with larger themes. It's a style he'd always admired but never attempted, until now. He told his star, Ethan Hawke, it was the film he had avoided making his whole life. The opening is so austere that for a moment it looks like the film might be in black and white. There's a simple shot of the First Reformed church, a no thrills property in the Dutch Colonial style. The credits are written in a 1940s style and the picture is in the old 4:3 ratio. In this boxy frame, the film generates considerable static tension. The image is always sparse and simple. The first meeting between Toller and the environmentalist Michael (Ettinger) is a ten-minute conversation.
But old habits die hard. Toller is writing a journal, has problems with his stomach, drinks a lot and is looking for a way to express his torment, much like Travis in Schrader's most famous script Taxi Driver. Maybe this is the film Schrader has spent four decades avoiding re-writing. The script also has a modern day re-working of Chekhov maxims about the gun that appears in the first act, only this time it's a suicide vest. After a buttoned-down first hour, the film starts to flirt with the Gothic and from out of nowhere a bizarre Kenrusselqatsi sequence is sprung upon us, a frantic hallucinatory montage of contemporary spiritual and environmental woes, in a style reminiscent of Altered States and Geoffrey Reggio's trilogy of quick quick slow tracts on man's destruction of the planet. The film now seems to be testing the audience's resolve to stick with it, and some couldn't avoid the giggles.
Hawke is full on in a role where he has to give as little as possible and he keeps you committed to it. The film's assertion that the extremities in contemporary public discourse are rooted in a knowledge that our planet is dying is really thought-provoking, but though the film is a unique and intense experience that is being pushed as the last roar of a great film master, I wasn't wholly convinced. (With all due respect, when did Schrader become that? Mishima is one of my favourite films but his track record is nowhere near the level of his legend: his last films were The Canyons and Dog Eat Dog.)
What struck me most was an unease I feel whenever film, or any other media, try to address modern-day concerns – environmental, social media, extremism, terrorism, etc. They just don't seem to have means to do it. It's a little like the awkward late 60s/ early 70s attempts to address the hippy movemnt but the disconnect seems much wider now. Perhaps that why there is so much escapism in the movies; they just haven't found the vocabulary to deal with the world as it is so fall back on what they know. Good on him for trying, but there is something rather quaint about Schrader attempting to deal with extremism, suicide bombing, environmental, social division with his simple, little, troubled priest film. I think we are still trying to process the 21st century through 20-century forms.
