Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

First Reformed Blu-ray Movie Review

Forgive them their sins. Unless you already have.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 16, 2018

First Reformed is fraught with some pretty intense religiosity, as may be gleaned from its very title, but it may be helpful to understand the film within the context of what some online biographies describe as Paul Schrader’s Calvinist roots. The Calvinist tradition is one that emphasizes the perhaps seemingly contradictory dialectic between predestination and divinely offered grace (if you’re a believer and are on your "good behavior", that is), as well as the “mediating” power of Jesus. In my long career as music director for any number of Christian and Jewish congregations, I actually had a choir member in an Episcopal parish years ago who was a direct descendant of Huldrych Zwingli, one of the founding lights of the Reformation and an interesting (slight) precursor to Calvin himself. This choir member also interestingly had quite a bit of Jewish ancestry, and we got to talking one day about why she had chosen Christianity over Judaism, and she quite earnestly told me, “Some people feel like they don’t need a mediator — I feel like I do”. First Reformed focuses on Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke), who has taken over pastoring a small (and probably dying) historical congregation in Snowbridge, New York, a congregation that is part of the Dutch Reformed tradition (not really Calvinist, but still on the “conservative” side of Christian belief). Mediation is at the center of this story as well, at least initially, though it’s centered on Toller himself, as he’s enlisted by a troubled young wife named Mary (Amanda Seyfried), who is concerned about her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger), a seemingly well meaning sort who has nonetheless gotten mixed up with some ecological activists which in turn led to his imprisonment in Canada. Michael has gotten out of confinement and back to his home in Snowbridge, but he’s advocating that the newly pregnant Mary have an abortion since he’s convinced the planet’s livability is about to descend into chaos due to years of bad “stewardship” (to use a quasi- Scriptural phrase).

Schrader’s films are almost always stuffed to the gills with subtext, and that’s once again the case with regard to First Reformed. There are a number of tragedies, both past and present, that inform the film (some of which I’ll refrain from mentioning in this review), including Toller’s own backstory, which includes a stint in the military as a chaplain and the death of his son in Iraq. Toller also shows clear signs of being perhaps mortally ill with some kind of disease, as evidenced by a shocking “reveal” early in the film as he’s relieving himself in the bathroom. Adding to the inescapable feeling of melancholy are other subplots detailing the attrition at Toller’s church, what seems to be an aborted (no pun intended) romance with a woman named Esther (Victoria Hill), and one of the central conceits of the film, namely a journal Toller is keeping, one which he is committed to writing in daily for a year (as a kind of spiritual discipline), after which he plans to destroy it.

There’s some really interesting information online about the history and beliefs of Calvinism, but one of the more interesting data bits that I stumbled across in doing some background research for this review is a site devoted to a supposed “Calvinist acronym”, TULIP. In this formulation that seeks to explicate some basic tenets of Calvinism, the letters stand for Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Persistence of the Saints. Now all of these probably obviously deserve greater analysis and explanation, but without seeming too cheeky about it, Schrader certainly traffics in what might be termed “limited depravity and atonement” in his treatment of Toller’s roiling psyche. The Calvinists' emphasis on the preeminence of the “Word” might also be seen as at least subliminally informing Schrader’s repeated use of Toller’s journal, something that regularly intrudes into otherwise dramatized scenes, to the point that actual dialogue within those scenes can suddenly be superceded by Toller’s voiceover (ostensibly from his journal entries) which offers a commentary of sorts on the scene being played. It’s an oddly distancing device, and one that I’m not sure always serves the dramatic intensity of the film totally well.

Without getting into plot details which might verge on spoiler territory, suffice it to say that Toller’s relationship with Mary grows more “complicated”, but Schrader’s screenplay kind of oddly starts to weave in elements of the ecological movement and global warming within the larger context of a huge celebration meant to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of Toller’s church. Is Schrader using global warming as a none too subtle stand in for the Apocalypse? Some of Michael’s early verbal screeds (some might argue “rants”) about the inevitable “End” would certainly seem to fit right into this thesis, but that then raises a certain disconnect between Toller’s professions of faith and certain actions he takes later in the film.

The whole relationship with Mary seemed oddly handled at times to me. The film ping pongs between Toller’s interactions with her and some of the preparations for the anniversary celebration, with a supposed linkage at the very end of the film. But what is Schrader hinting at in the shocking few minutes (and last image) of First Reformed? I’ve given it a good deal of thought since viewing the film, and I have to say I’m still scratching my head about it. The upshot of the relationship seems positively unhinged given other aspects of Toller’s predicaments, not the least of which is his seemingly precarious health. Maybe that aforementioned dialectic between predestination and free will (as evidenced by our supposed ability to make decisions about how to behave or interact with a divine presence) short circuited Toller’s keenly perceptive mind and led him to simply say, “To hell with it!” That of course is an “easy” punch line, but it may actually get at the foundation of Schrader’s own evidently thorny (sorry) relationship with belief, faith and, yes, saving grace.

First Reformed Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

First Reformed is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.34:1. That "old school" aspect ratio may be meant to subliminally evoke "tradition", one of the key elements providing a bit of "undertow" to the dramatic proceedings here, as Toller's more traditional clapboard and steepled church needs to compete with the gigantic and overtly theatrical "Abundant Life" megachurch (one that actually owns the smaller church). I had to do a bit of digging, but found a brief interview with cinematographer Alexander Dynan where he mentions using the Arri Alexa SXT for the shoot, as well as stating that Schrader had evidently been quite struck by Ida and wanted to keep the camera as static as possible, as that film did. Another way that First Reformed perhaps unintentionally mimics the Polish film is that, despite it being ostensibly in "color", the palette is tepid at best, tending to exploit grays and beiges and other neutral tones and really only in a couple of moments (including the horrifying reveal of a really disturbing death) "popping" in any traditional way. That lack of hue and the use of a lot of rather dimly lit interior locations gives the proceedings a certain amount of murkiness, though close-ups can still offer abundant levels of fine detail. This is not a film that is designed to offer "wow" visuals, and so my hunch is few videophiles will be raving about the actual "look" of this piece, but the transfer here does not have any compression anomalies.

First Reformed Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Much as with the video presentation, First Reformed's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is on the tamped down side, an understandable aspect given how "talky" this film is. A lot of the story plays out in small scale "two hander" scenes with simple dialogue between a pair of characters. A few isolated outdoor scenes have dottings of ambient environmental sounds, and Lustmord's kind of odd score occasionally wafts through the surrounds. That said, there are absolutely no issues whatsoever with distortion or dropouts or any other kinds of distraction, and fidelity is fine throughout the audio presentation.

First Reformed Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Paul Schrader


• Discernment: Contemplating First Reformed (1080p; 15:43) includes interviews with Schrader and Hawke.

First Reformed Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A number of press releases and the back cover of this Blu-ray classify First Reformed as a "thriller", but I personally have a bit of a hard time nudging it completely into that genre niche. It's really more of a character study and deals with all sorts of weighty issues that Schrader has often addressed in his previous works as either/both a writer and/or a director. His perceived takedown of some elements of "contemporary" religious belief and practice is actually rather subtle here, since it's at least partially buried beneath the pure character details of Toller, but it's really in this very personalization that Schrader is able to go for the gusto in terms of exploring personal hypocrisy and honor. What global warming has to do with any of this is anyone's guess, but the dire predictions Michael offers early in the film certainly have an Apocalyptic air about them. Hawke and Seyfried are both very effective here, even when I personally felt that the writing didn't totally support the "evolution" of their relationship. While this was evidently screened in Venice last year, it looks like its official United States release was in May of this year, and I frankly wouldn't be surprised to see Hawke make next year's Academy Award nominations in the Best Actor category. Technical merits are solid, and First Reformed comes Recommended.