What would happen if you crossed Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light with Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest? What would that priest look like, if you mixed the latter’s tortured overtures toward spiritual purity with the bleak existential angst of the former?
Paul Schrader seeks to answer these hypotheticals with his First Reformed, the tale of Ernst Toller, a disillusioned, middle-aged reverend (played by Ethan Hawke) of a Continental-era Reformed church in New York who undergoes a profound and militant spiritual transformation after one of his parishioners, who is obsessed with the idea of the world’s inevitable environmental collapse, commits suicide.
I first saw this film when it came out in 2017, and found it to be far inferior to Bergman’s classic, and probably a little worse than Bresson’s, which is solid but likely not among his best. Watching it now, almost a decade later, I stand by that overall assessment, though there are positive elements I missed the first go-around, so put off was I by the writer-director’s brazen lifting of plot points from the older films. Those elements, however, are not enough to save First Reformed from its negative trajectory, as it undeniably bottoms out with a bizarre conclusion involving Hawke and co-star Amanda Seyfried deep-Frenching in the rectory while Schrader’s camera wheels around them to a rendition of the old hymnal “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”
But the film doesn’t start out badly. In fact, one of the first things that struck me on my second viewing is how gorgeous the film looks, right from its starkly hypnotic opening that would seem to anticipate a horror flick rather than psychological drama—though a certain brooding doom is evoked, nonetheless. Shot by Alexander Dynan, the world of First Reformed is intensely muted, its look desaturated enough so as to approach colorlessness (indeed, the initial plan was to shoot in black-and-white, perhaps to more directly ape the Masters); the resultant effect is that when stronger hues do appear—bright reds, in particular—they leap spritely to the eye, which has been lulled into a kind of washed-out complacency by the rest of Dynan’s palette.
First Reformed is also exceedingly well composed, for, despite the overrated significance of Schrader’s Transcendental Style in Film: Bresson, Ozu, Dreyer, taking visual cues from the great filmmakers he treats there is hardly ever a bad idea. Browse any selection of stills taken from First Reformed, for instance, and you’ll immediately notice neatly symmetrical frames and admirable staging, where the mere positioning of characters do half the work—though sparely, it should be said—in suggesting the scene’s emotional content, or lack thereof. (No, this isn’t exactly in line with what Schrader outlines as “Transcendental style,” but, as far as I know, Schrader himself would caution against placing his own films within the canon he erected in his 1972 manifesto.)
The overall feel is one of stasis, of still frames, and drawn-in visages only seldom contorted by naked emotion. This solemnity is neatly composed but actually masks an inner hollowness. Toller, after all, is a broken man, a divorcee and former military chaplain who lost his only begotten son in a war the reverend naively pressured him to enlist in (so as to not break with family tradition), and his desire for order—manifesting in his keeping of a daily journal, a la Diary‘s protagonist—is really a desire for purpose. In this respect, Toller not only resembles Bresson’s unnamed priest but Taxi Driver‘s Travis Bickle, and those other obsessive, suppressed male protagonists Schrader has created, with and without the direction of Martin Scorsese.
But First Reformed is a slow, contemplative film, with none of that trademark Scorsese freneticism, for Schrader’s protagonist is a withdrawn, bookish type, prone to long, single-candle-lit silences as he attempts to commune with a God he feels estranged from. Appropriately, the average shot length tops at about 13 seconds, according to this viewer, and the editing, courtesy of Benjamin Rodriguez Jr., certainly favors the longer shot, though it is also unafraid to jump-cut at will, or after a tense emotional beat.
However, while the editing is largely solid, it does repeat the same mistake as Diary in that it shows Toller writing his journal entry while he recites verbatim its contents in voice-over. (If you read Transcendental Style, Schrader takes pains to defend this move, via Susan Sontag, in Diary as Bresson “doubling” down on the “everyday” nature of the moment, in order to later on have a significant event “rupture” that preceding banality, but to the viewer who is not donning such theoretical blinders, it simply comes across as tedious.) Yes, there are times when Toller’s V.O. speaks over scenes without the accompaniment of an entry, but the overall effect is of homage merely for the sake of homage—and with none of Bresson’s beautiful penmanship, to boot.
This, of course, now leads me to the film’s demerits. Despite its appeals (and the fact that it had two strong models to work off of) First Reformed does not rise to nearly the same level as the best of Bresson or Bergman. The primary weakness is Schrader’s screenplay, which, while certainly in keeping with the film’s morose atmosphere, is uninterestingly barebones and—more fatally—rather obvious with its portentousness and character work.
But Bresson’s scripts were also spare (though also, at times, poetically rich, by virtue of their pithy phrasing and in conjunction with the director’s visuals/editing) and of lesser priority than other aspects of the narrative. The deeper issue, script-wise, of this film is the long shadow cast by Winter Light. Schrader adopts the “diary-keeping minister afflicted with stomach cancer” angle from Bresson but steals the paranoid and suicidal parishioner element from Bergman’s masterpiece, as well as the frumpy woman who pines in vain for, and tirelessly pesters, said minister. The utilization of both elements stand in stark contrast to Winter Light, and not to their credit.
First off, Schrader bungles the mentally ill man Michael Mensana’s (Philip Ettinger, who infuses the comparatively small role, which could have easily devolved into hammy hysterics, with a genuine distress for the natural world weighted by defeat) suicide by showing in graphic detail the act’s aftermath, and Toller reacting with all-too-apparent revulsion/grief; whereas, in Winter Light, Bergman distances the camera from the body, and obscures Pastor Ericsson’s reaction to it with that same distance plus the silent, almost routine, formality of the police investigation.
Yes, despite the matched plot points, these are two different films, and one can argue that the horror of Toller’s discovery is essential for his eventual militant turn, as bloody violence must be met with bloody violence, but this is 1) way too obvious a direction, and 2) counterintuitively fails on even that front, since most seasoned filmmakers know that not showing specific details which the viewer understands to be disturbing or gruesome in some way actually heightens the intended effect, as it forces them to fill in the blanks on their own. Bergman’s scene also better illustrates the sense of alienation that both Winter Light and First Reformed clearly traffic in; so by refusing to take cues from the Swedish Master, Schrader fails in homage and with the purposes of his story inasmuch as it is original.
With Esther, Schrader’s Märta counterpart, this failure is even more egregious. In Winter Light, Märta is dowdy and grating, yes, but she is also given a measure of substance that works to realize her as a full-fledged human being in spite of Pastor Ericsson’s condescension. Recall that long, uncompromisingly acted monologue when he reads her letter—is there anything close to that level of character complexity in First Reformed? Not a chance. Esther, instead, is reduced to a lonely nag, circumscribed purely by the scope of Toller’s loathing (as her adoration throws his own lacks into relief) and little more. As a result, Toller’s final dismissal of her has no true build-up, portraying only a nigh-puerile cruelty where Winter Light‘s exchange had the heft of a climactic confrontation, as Ericsson bludgeons the poor woman with statement after heartless statement.
I have already mentioned the ending, which comes about after Toller has effectively transferred Michael’s cause—and thus, the man’s despair—as his own, becoming the widowed Mary Mensana’s (Seyfried, clearly miscast but trying) de facto companion, and eventually donning the suicide vest Michael had created and probably aimed to use at some point, though Mary’s discovery of it in their garage robbed him of the opportunity. Toller plans to detonate himself at the 250th anniversary of First Reformed, for in attendance will be Edward Balq, a local business magnate responsible for underwriting the church’s restoration, whose company has also inflicted serious environmental damage in the area. Balq is your stereotypical capitalist boor, and his belittling of Toller at a diner predisposes the audience to root for his death, at least—not to say anything of the many gathered innocents’. Toller is primed to blow when he sees, out the window of the attached rectory, that Mary has chosen to attend the ceremony at the last second.
Unable to take her life, Toller loses his resolve. In the inevitable breakdown, he agonizingly wraps himself in barbed wire and dons the ceremonial vestments. He then pours himself a glass of drain cleaner, which he is just about to down when Mary walks in unannounced. They then passionately kiss, as previously described, and cut to black.
That this final moment may be occurring in Toller’s head—or perhaps in some fantastical state after death—only minimally tempers its ridiculousness. On top of the adolescent stab at profundity, it is also a total cop-out, providing no real resolution for Toller’s story or any other plotline, for that matter, as the energy has been sluggishly yet inexorably building up towards some final release. Considering the gradual intensification of Toller’s angst, and his military past, an explosive finale not only makes narrative sense but may have also provided a kind of blackly humorous thrill to the proceedings, which would have nicely counteracted the rest of the film’s self-seriousness. Now, would this have been a good ending? Maybe, maybe not, but compared to the ending Schrader opted for, almost anything else seems preferable.
Speaking of self-seriousness and adolescent stabs at profundity: arguably First Reformed’s most bizarre, and unintentionally hilarious scene (and that’s saying something) occurs about 3/4 of the way in, when Mary visits Toller at his home, and in a gesture of intimacy tells him about an activity she used to do with Michael they called “The Magical Mystery Tour,” where they would each smoke a joint and lie closely together, one atop the other, sharing each other’s gaze and breath. Toller and Mary, of course, then do this (sans any weed, by the way), and Schrader chooses to expound upon this moment by having them levitate off the ground, and then float through a green-screened backdrop of the stars, then the natural world in various biomes, followed by sequences of mankind’s largescale industrial ravaging, while an ambient New Age soundtrack intones ominously.
Now, what this scene is trying to do should be obvious to anyone over the age of thirteen, but its execution unfortunately recalls not so much the gravitas of the cosmos groaning for salvation but something comedy duo Tim & Eric might have cooked up on Adult Swim circa the early 2010s. With this scene and the finale in mind, the idea that First Reformed‘s central motivation springs less from a genuine concern for mankind’s destruction of the environment and more out of one lonely man’s self-centered need to semi-erotically assuage his emptiness (in the guise of divine purpose) hopefully clarifies things for the potentially puzzled viewer. Though Hawke gives it the old college try as Reverend Toller, not even his all-around reliable skills can save the role, which sucks the rest of First Reformed into its vacuum, from Schrader’s inability as a writer.
This may be far too many words spent in the examination of what is ultimately an artistic mediocrity, and a fairly apparent one, at that; but by donning the masques of superior works by superior artists, Schrader would lift his own craftsmanship higher in the esteem of certain gullible critics (or more ideologically motivated ones perfectly willing to excuse/transform artistic flaws through some esoteric method) by virtue of those works’ borrowed power. The appearance of greatness—its visual entrancement, its rhythmic patterns—is not greatness per se, and it is the discerning critic’s responsibility to judge, to the best of their ability, a film’s full depth and range, swearing no fealty to any one theoretical bias in particular (paraphrasing a tenet espoused by Alex Sheremet) but willing to use any and all if it proves useful to the analysis at hand.
When a film so unabashedly invites comparison to previous triumphs, though, perhaps some additional space is needed to specify where exactly comparison begins and ends. But maybe such a project was doomed from the get-go: though Winter Light and Diary of a Country Priest share undeniable superficial similarities, they are in effect disparate works, by filmmakers with kindred yet distinctly unique sensibilities and concerns. Grey Pastor Tomas Ericsson’s problems are, after all, radically different from those of the sickly young cleric stumbling under the trees of Ambricourt. To merge the two would be to risk just as many narrative hazards as intrigues.
It’d be kind of like claiming that there is some mystical spiritual-historical link between, say, the oeuvre of Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu with Robert Bresson’s, simply because they both adhered to a filmmaking ethos that prioritized economy over excess, and eschewed traditional dramatic exposition in order to exercise subtler methods of winning the viewer’s immersion. You could even lump in—oh, I don’t know—Carl Theodor Dreyer alongside them, while you’re at it, because of the same similarities, but, of course, his uniqueness is just a little more unique than Ozu and Bresson’s are from each other’s. All different filmmakers, all with their own singular take on the world, but hey. Close enough, right? You could even, if you really wanted to, write a book about it…
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More from Ezekiel Yu: Wight Screens: Reviewing Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Pulse” (2001), The Worst Thing: Reviewing Kristoffer Borgli’s “The Drama” (2026), Extinguishing Sin: On Hirokazu Koreeda’s “Monster” (2023)