First Reformed (2017) ****

A film to haunt you, with a bleak we are already in hell motif that is reaffirmed in scene after scene. I came to the film with no real expectations or pre-conceived ideas of what it was all about, apart from the basic premise of a man of God struggling with his faith. As it turns out, First Reformed is that but it is also much more, and it is darker and more intelligent that I imagined it would be. It's about a man trying to keep the few slivers of hope he has left alive in the face of a community and a world that seem largely ambivalent about their future. Bergman's Winter Light is an influence, and although I've never seen it, I am familiar with some of Bergman's other films, and the sense of melancholia and hopelessness presented here feels so tonally similar. While a larger, present-day crisis is integral to the plot of this film, it's not in the end a film about that crisis but about how that crisis pushes a man already teetering further towards the edge.

It's unforgivable that Ethan Hawke was not nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Reverend Toller. The Oscars get it wrong a lot, but this feels like an especially brazen oversight. There is a quiet intensity to Hawke's performance (a phrase I hear a lot, but in this case it's very accurate), and a lot of that has to do with the bleak expression he wears throughout most of the film. He looks miserable, with his constantly furrowed brow and deadened eyes. The quiet delivery of his lines, and the fact that his character is so often not saying what he wants to say is devastating because we know, from the narration of his diary, that he is a man in turmoil. I am failing at describing what exactly it is that Ethan Hawke does that makes his performance so good, but it is so understated and restrained and perfectly compliments Paul Schrader's script and direction.

4/4