Paul Schrader's First Reformed, in which Ethan Hawke mimes a drinking Protestant priest in a psychological crisis, is an enchanting, breathtaking film! Definitely the crowning work of this always underestimated important director of American cinema! Schrader is no longer trying to reach a large audience. First Reformed is aimed at a limited audience. A clear demarcation from the mainstream in every respect. Our colleague Sulgi, a truly ardent Schrader follower, worked in our first address at the Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo! He gave me the former film critic's standard book on the transcendence of cinema. Schrader wrote about Ozu-Dreyer-Bresson at the age of 24! Most hip customers around twenty definitely don't borrow one of the three! As a director, Schrader has always uncompromisingly revealed his influences. There is no "stealing ideas" for him, but there is "intelligent, strategic stealing". Schrader, who grew up in a Christian Reformed church with a strict Calvinist concession, has always understood his work as a bow to his role models. Those who read something about him learn that he grew up without films. It is clear that the forbidden developed a special attraction! It is also understandable that Schrader, unlike the Neukölln hipsters, did not turn his attention to fancy popcorn goods, but to strict films. Those who first want to be cracked by us. Schrader, one reads, experienced as a teenager the bridge of his spiritual education and quite "profane" films. The crux for him: The convergence of film and church would not be expressed in the message, but in the style. Schrader, the great stylist! Who, if not him, rang in the stylized 80s with "American Gigolo"? And First Reformed? Slowly the camera advances, showing the white facade of a church in the state of New York. We see the colonial architecture before the grey sky. Images and music convey a severity that no longer exists in cinema. Schrader is now very close to his beloved role models. The angular priest in ankle-high trousers named Ernst Toller (Hawke) also seems strict. Sparse. But he is a very restless man. His church has very few members. At night Toller drinks, writes down all his misery in his diary (who doesn't think of Bresson's example of the country priest?). What is behind Toller's torments? He used to be happily married. A military pastor who encouraged his son to move to Iraq. We suspect what follows. The son fell, Toller's marriage broke up. Now he is practicing both buses and denial in his small tourist church. Then the pregnant Mary (Amanda Seyfried) turns to him, who believes her husband would demand an abortion from her. His name is Michael (Philip Ettinger), he works as an environmental activist, suffers from depression and believes in no future. We are allowed to transfer this to the whole world. Toller, on the other hand, believes that there is still hope for our planet. In the following both men seem to influence each other. For better or for worse. Finally, Mary confides to Toller that she has discovered suicide tools in her husband... Schrader's film closes. Is he aiming at an audience that wants a psychological drama? No. Or a dogmatic representation of spiritual themes? No. Schrader is concerned with spiritual consciousness. The new edition, transcendent cinemas. The creation of an alternative, transcendent film reality. First Reformed thus addresses an audience that knows and loves Schrader's role models. Once my father told me that in the 60s it was not a pure pleasure to go to the cinema. You MUST swallow the new "Bergman" or the new "Tarkovsky" - understand it, work it out. Schrader made a film of silence, of blanks. His visual language almost seems like a liturgy. A reflection of faith and its opponents. Schrader has achieved this for the first time. First Reformed no longer needs to make use of common narrative patterns. Schrader leaves all that behind. We can take a deep breath and be amazed.
