7.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A former military chaplain is wracked by grief over the death of his son. Mary is a member of his church whose husband, a radical environmentalist, commits suicide, setting the plot in motion.
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Cedric the Entertainer, Victoria Hill, Philip EttingerDrama | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.34:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
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).
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.
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.
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.
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