Can a crumbling church survive the weight of climate despair and personal tragedy?
In short: Paul Schrader’s 2017 psychological thriller First Reformed follows a tormented minister in upstate New York grappling with alcoholism, the loss of his son in the Iraq War, and a radical environmentalist’s existential crisis. It is a stark, austere exploration of faith, stewardship, and the terrifying prospect of a dying planet.
Reverend Ernst Toller leads the First Reformed Church, a 250-year-old Dutch Reformed site in Snowbridge, New York. Once a stop on the Underground Railroad, the church now functions largely as a tourist attraction, struggling with dwindling attendance under Toller’s leadership. Toller, a former military chaplain, finds himself increasingly isolated, documenting his internal collapse in a journal he intends to destroy after one year.
The narrative tension ignites when Toller meets Mary, a pregnant woman seeking counsel for her husband, Michael. Michael, a radical environmentalist, is consumed by the belief that climate change will render the world uninhabitable, leading him to demand an abortion. As Toller attempts to guide the couple, he discovers a suicide vest in their garage. Michael’s subsequent suicide and the church’s upcoming semiquincentennial celebration—funded by a major industrialist who dismisses climate change as a complicated matter—force Toller into a confrontation with his own spiritual and moral convictions.
Schrader’s direction employs a restrained, methodical style, drawing inspiration from the transcendental cinema of Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Carl Theodor Dreyer. By shooting in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, Schrader emphasizes vertical lines to capture more of the human form. The film, which cost $3.5 million to produce, garnered universal acclaim for Ethan Hawke’s performance and Schrader’s screenplay. It remains a searing examination of existential dread, blending the formal precision of art-house cinema with the urgent, unresolved questions of contemporary environmental and religious life.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: First Reformed
- Also: Wikidata — First Reformed · CC0
- Also: Wikidata — First Reformed Dutch Church · CC0
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