Aesthetically, conceptually and theologically mature.
I could end this there, really. It’s a film that demands to be watched. And if you’ve not seen it, you most certainly should at the first opportunity. Schrader and Hawke have worked hard — they deserve your attention.
*
Hawke plays Rev. Ernst Toller, the minister of a Protestant church in New York State. His son was killed in Iraq, after he encouraged him to sign up. His wife has left him. He drinks. His stomach hurts. He pisses blood. A congregant, Mary (Amanda Seyfried), comes to him, tells him her husband, Michael (Phillip Ettinger), is depressed, obsessed with the coming ecological catastrophe his unborn child will have to live through. Toller counsels him, but to no avail, and he kills himself, arranging for Toller to find his corpse.
Toller becomes invested in Mary, helping her through her grief, helps her hide the suicide bomb vest her husband had been working on. But Toller falls into Michael’s world. He decides to use the bomb to kill the CEO of a heavily-polluting paper company, after learning the CEO will be present at his church’s 250th anniversary (and that the company is a major donor to the organisation that funds his church). But, when he realises that Mary will be killed in the explosion, he abandons the plan, wraps himself in barbed wire and is about to drink drain cleaner when she finds him. They embrace, kiss, and the film simply ends.
*
A lot of territory is covered by First Reformed. It never feels overburdened, though. It doesn’t even really feel that dense. It has a stark simplicity to it, like Rev. Toller’s robes, or his Dutch Colonial church’s white-washed walls.
The music is provided by Lustmord. This is such a perfect choice that it’s almost funny. Lustmord is a pioneer of dark ambient, and has formerly provided the setting for a Satanic High Mass. His score is, predictably, unobtrusive. Present only at the edge of hearing but irresistibly present all the same. It seeps into the atmosphere of the film, almost becoming visible.
There are some other interesting musical choices. Naturally, gospel music plays a role. We’re told Martin Luther wrote one of his most famous hymns while taking a shit. And the truly awful Neil Young song ‘Who’s Gonna Stand Up?’ is sung a capella at Michael’s funeral. (I paused Lustmord to listen to it — it is terrible.)
The film’s environmentalism, or more precisely its environmental theology, is of course central to it, but isn’t the only thing present. It’s framed in the context of a greater conversation about the relationship between hope, despair, and reason. Specifically, the film seems to relate reason to despair, and renders hope irresistibly irrational.
The Christian hope that the film communicates is not one that we can arrive at through reason (at least, not alone). It is instead fixed upon a point outside of reason, upon the faith of an Outside that is calling to us. The estchaton, the promised final state of all-in-all-in-God. Reason merely offers us certainty, and the certainty that reason presents us with in First Reformed is the certainty of despair.
We’ve fucked up.
Reasonably, we can only expect catastrophe. The seas will turn to plastic, and the air to radioactive soot. The ozone layer will come crashing down upon us, tearing the sky apart as it falls. That is what we can expect. But it is not what we can, or the film says should, hope for.
Despair is the reasonable response, but despair has also sometimes been described by theologians as the unforgiveable sin. Because, to despair — which is far more than to simply be sad or depressed — is to hold that evil, sin, and death, cannot be overcome by God. Despair occurs when we say ‘Not even God could forgive me.’ In essence, this idolises sin over God’s capacity and willingness to forgive and heal. Hope moves beyond what can be reasonably expected, and points, to paraphrase Derrida, to a future beyond the future. The eschaton. The New Jerusalem. The great remaking.
*
Though to make a few concluding remarks that bring the film down to a more mundane level, it has some very condemnatory things to say about religion in today’s world. The church that Toller belongs to is described as being closer to a corporation than anything else. It has money, and big facilities and technology and youth groups — but we should be troubled by how unchallenging the advice it offers is. We see Toller’s boss (Cedric Antonio Kyles) delivering a sermon over webcam in which he has nothing more to offer than to remind his digital congregation that God wants us not to worry or be anxious.
Toller wants the church to take a lead, a stance, against ecological ruin — but that’s not going to happen. His church is too rooted in what Kierkegaard called ‘Christendom’, or David Tibet’s notion of the Christian Imperium, maybe. It’s sensible, and socially integrated. It’s part of the marketplace.
Don’t forget to check out the souvenir stand.
New Old Dream 