Paul Schraders recent output, The Dying of the Light and The Canyons, are so bad you would be okay to forget the seminal works he has been a part of. Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation of Christ, American Gigolo….these films are important works in the history of cinema and none of them would have happened without Schrader. In short, he could use something to remind us how good he really is, and it just might be First Reformed.
A film about despair through the prism of spirituality, it stars Ethan Hawke as a clergyman dealing with a loss of hope and possibly his own sanity. The film co-stars Amanda Seyfried, Philip Ettinger, Cedric the Entertainer, and Michael Gaston. Here’s a synopsis:
Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) is a solitary, middle-aged parish pastor at a small Dutch Reform church in upstate New York on the cusp of celebrating its 250th anniversary. Once a stop on the Underground Railroad, the church is now a tourist attraction catering to a dwindling congregation, eclipsed by its nearby parent church, Abundant Life, with its state-of-the-art facilities and 5,000-strong flock. When a pregnant parishioner (Amanda Seyfried) asks Reverend Toller to counsel her husband, a radical environmentalist, the clergyman finds himself plunged into his own tormented past, and equally despairing future, until he finds redemption in an act of grandiose violence. From writer-director Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver; American Gigolo; Affliction) comes a gripping thriller about a crisis of faith that is at once personal, political, and planetary.
First Reformed opens May 18th.
