In the emotionally bleak psychological drama First Reformed, Ethan Hawke plays Toller, the clergyman in charge of a historic church with about ten parishioners. The church survives as the museum-and-gift-shop arm of a modern megachurch helmed by Reverend Jeffers (Cedric the Entertainer billed as Cedric Kyles). Toller is a very troubled guy, who is consumed by a journalling project, which he says brings him no peace, but only self-pity. Toller is content to perform a weekly service and guide the odd tourist through the church. That is all about to be disrupted by the church’s upcoming 250-year anniversary celebration, which Toller dreads.
Toller is asked by one of his tiny flock (Amanda Seyfried) to counsel her very depressed husband (Phillip Ettinger). Few understand depression as well as Toller, who, we learn, has joined the church because of a grievous family loss. He is also obsessively thinking and over-thinking a crisis, not so much of faith, but of purpose. And, it is revealed that Toller is in physical pain from a very menacing medical condition.
Toller tells the young husband that balancing hope and despair is life itself. Indeed, most of First Reformed focuses on the despair. As First Reformed gets darker and darker, it become more and more intense, all the way up to a ticking bomb of a thriller ending. The ending is such a squirm-in-your-seat nail-biter that it’s hard to watch, but the payoff is worth it.
Writer-director Paul Schrader, has created a serious work of art in First Reformed. It is a very still movie with a very spare soundtrack. The aspect of the frame is squarish and sometimes square. Everything about First Reformed is distilled down to its concentrated core. Schrader wrote Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last Temptation of Christ, and directed Affliction and Auto Focus. So he is no stranger to plumbing the depths of human internal crises.
Ethan Hawke is excellent as Toller. Hawke’s performances are usually fidgety. Not here. Hawke is notable for his stillness as he plays a man who flings himself into reflection and away from social entanglements.
The supporting performances are superb: Amanda Seyfried, Cedric the Entertainer, Bill Hoag as Toller’s lay assistant and Victoria Hill as the woman who wants to rekindle a connection that Toller doesn’t have the emotional capacity for. All are suitably understated; this movie is so stripped-down to concentrate on the profound, there’s just no room for a Big Performance.
Phillip Ettinger is wonderful as the depressed young husband. This is a smart, committed and sensitive character who isn’t at all wrong – he’s just obsessing and going off the rails.
Who can be saved from despairing at the human condition? And what does it take? First Reformed provides an answer in its exceptionally powerful ending.