235. US director and scriptwriter Paul Schrader’s film “First Reformed” (2017) (USA): Schrader’s best work, drawing on Bergman’s “Winter Light” and Tarkovsky’s “Sacrifice”

“Wisdom 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.”  

“How easily they talk about prayer, those who have never really prayed.” 

----- thoughts written in the diary of Rev Ernest Toller, via “voice over”,  in First Reformed, scripted by Paul Schrader

Any evaluation of the film First Reformed would be considerably enhanced by some knowledge about the American Trappist monk, theologian, social activist Thomas Merton (1915-68), who had interacted with Buddhist monks, and  studied Hinduism, Jainism, Sufism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and published his thoughts in his bestselling  autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain and other works. In the film First Reformed, the principal figure Rev Ernest Toller (Ethan Hawke) writes a diary (read by "voice over") on his thoughts just as Merton had put his thoughts on paper that eventually became a best seller. Director and original scriptwriter Paul Schrader makes the connection visually by showing us the stack of Merton’s published works in Toller’s room and at least two references to Merton verbally in the film.

Rev Toller (Ethan Hawke)  delivers his sermon in his church

The writing of the diary and the “voice-over” reading of the written lines are not just a connection to Merton’s and Tolller’s habits in Schrader’s film but an important device employed in the script that becomes critical to unravel the ending of the film.  At the end of the film, there is no voice over, there is silence.

Toller and Esther (Victoria Hill): Esther expresses
concern for Toller's health

Schrader’s script revolves around Rev Toller, the pastor of a historical church that once had served as a refuge for runaway slaves in USA. Toller was once married and had a son he lost in the Iraq war as a US soldier. Toller himself served in the US army as a chaplain, and had encouraged his son to enlist. The eventual death of his son wrecked his marriage.  Early in Schrader’s film there is a shot of the near empty church with one bespectacled lady, Esther (a very convincing Victoria Hill), sitting prominently in one of the nearly empty benches. Any viewer of Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light (1963) will recall Rev Tomas looking at the bespectacled Marta in that film in a similar situation. As First Reformed progresses, the viewer learns that Esther is in love with Toller with fervent hopes that he would marry her just as Marta and Tomas in the Swedish classic. Much later in the film First Reformed, Toller is introduced to a troubled environmental activist Michael who wishes to abort his wife’s foetus because he does not want his child to be born in a polluted world run on business interests. Michael’s worries are not far removed from those of Jonas’ (Max von Sydow) worries of China developing nuclear capability that he confides with Rev Tomas in Winter Light. Both films’ priests are concerned with Christianity they preach and forced to look at external realities.

After those common threads, Schrader’s script grows on its own merit—the development of the thinly attended First Reformed Church of Toller under the umbrage of the Abundant Life Church with Rev Joel Jeffers (Cedric the Entertainer a.k.a.  Cedric Kyles) who functions as a big brother senior priest towards Toller—mainly because Jeffers’s church is flushed with “abundant” money and members that include a successful businessman who own industries that pollute the countryside. The troubled Michael commits suicide, while Toller realizes that the Abundant Life Church is run by the very forces that the late Michael had hated and feared.  This Abundant Life Church in turn supports the First Reformed Church of Toller.

Toller and Mary (Amanda Seyfried): Mary wants to resist aborting her foetus,
an action her husband Michael wants her to take

Rev Toller, the viewer soon realizes, is suffering from a serious ailment (he is urinating blood) but continues to consume significant quantities of liquor in private. He is also consulting a doctor. Toller’s church member and admirer Esther too is concerned about his health but he rebukes her for it. Jeffers too is worried that Toller is spending too much time in the figurative Garden (the biblical Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed to God to remove the cup of suffering/wrath if He willed it).  Toller simultaneously gets psychologically and emotionally closer to the pregnant  Mary (Amanda Seyfried), the wife of the late Michael. Mary plans to leave town to be with her sister. In spite of an Andrei Tarkovsky-like levitation sequence [The Sacrifice (1986); The Mirror(1975)] there is no suggestion of a carnal relationship between the two.

Toller and Mary: at the funeral of  Michael

Schrader’s script emphasizes that First Reformed is less about Mary, Michael, Esther or Jeffers—it is more about Toller and his diary, which is essentially spiritual. Toller knows that he is about to die from a serious medical condition. Influenced by Michael’s suicide, Toller is tempted to blow up the enemy of Michael with Michael’s own devices but changes his mind when he sees Mary with her unborn child in his church. What is debatable is whether Toller is more concerned about the unborn child of Michael that he had wanted to be born into this world earlier in the film or his platonic affection for Mary suffering from depression in her recent widowhood. Perhaps, both.

Toller wears his "crown of thorns"

Where Schrader scores most is his diligent effort to weave in biblical quotations that reflect Merton’s and Toller’s views into the script. The loaded final conversation between Jeffers and Toller is punctuated with such quotes. While one wondered why Schrader showed Toller picking up the barbed wire fencing near the church’s graveyard which had killed a hare, the ultimate use of the barbed wire in the film is visually reminiscent of the crown of thorns worn by Jesus.

Schrader’s true winner is the ending which a keen viewer would not accept at face value.  There are several clues to decipher what actually happened: the replacement of the alcohol in the glass with a chemical liquid, Toller changing into a white cassock (throughout the film he wears a black one) with fresh blood stains, the embrace of Mary who does not seem to be affected by the barbed wire under the cassock, and the sudden silence. The film’s initial sequence outside the church is also silent. Toller's final action can be connected to the initial words scribbled in his diary: A life without despair is a life without hope.

First Reformed has won 55 awards already.

P.S. Thomas Merton was in Darjeeling in the late 60s and early 70s interacting with Buddhist monks and Jesuits, the very years this author was a student there in a Jesuit high school. What a coincidence!  Could we have passed each other on some street or corridor? Bergman’s Winter Light is one of the author’s top 10 films ever made and has been reviewed on this blog. Tarkovsky’s The Mirror has also been reviewed in detail on this blog. (Click on the names of the films in this postscript to access the reviews)