by Chris Feil
Paul Schrader’s First Reformed is a bit like running a psychological and spiritual marathon, an unflinching look at despair in the modern era but told with the style of Tarkovsky and Bresson to lend its concerns a punishing timelessness. All the critical hosannas it has received are spot on, but rest assured that this is one tough, bruising sit. What keeps us from running away from the trauma is the absorbing honesty of Ethan Hawke’s showcase performance.
Hawke stars as Reverend Toller, the priest of a tiny congregation who joined the church in response to his grief over a son lost in overseas combat. Faced with a parishioner taking climate change activism to fatalist ends, he begins a descent into the dark reaches of the soul, the kind that can only end in his damnation or salvation. The actor grants him such specific humanity that makes the film all the more difficult to watch, yet impossible to turn away from.
The performance works on many levels. Toller’s ensuing implosion has all the warning signs of our world in collapse. And its impulse to knowing self-destruction. As much as Hawke reveals to us (and by doing so very little), he provides the richest insight into Toller’s headspace when he is evasive. His Toller is a bad liar and least convincing when he is lying to himself. Drowning himself in booze and indulged darkness, his personal pain becomes the walls that close in on him.
Part of what makes the film so difficult to bear is how transplanted we are into Toller’s suffering, a testament to Hawke’s ability to invite the audience into the headspace he’s playing. Every movement the actor makes is like watching the man pick a scab until it becomes a festering wound, plumbing the depths of his psyche to physically felt effect in the audience. Schrader avoids simple answers and has a similarly focused starring player in Hawke - he’s all tension without exhale, fragile but pristine. It’s a performance as profound as the film itself.
As ever, Hawke makes it look so damn easy. High praise when First Reformed is such a rigorous beast.
My hopes are not particularly high that this career peak for Hawke could translate into an Oscar play - the film is challenging stuff and faces a long year of contenders ahead. But you can rest easy that when we discuss the actor and the inevitable day comes when his natural gifts are no longer taken for granted, First Reformed will be one of his most discussed performances.