By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Cedric Kyles, Victoria Hill, Philip Ettinger and Michael Gaston.
Rating: Excellent.
Two Time Academy Award Nominee Paul Schrader brings “First Reformed”, his 21st film as a director and again he did an outstanding job.
The movie tells the story of the Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke) a former military chaplain that is filled with guilt due to his son´s death and preaches at the First Reformed Church in Upstate New York.
Everything will change for Toller when he meets Mary (Amanda Seyfried) a regular member of his congregation who is very worried about her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger) a radical environmentalist who suffers constantly of attacks and depression.
Toller will try to do everything in his hands to help Mary and her husband. He will try to uncover a secret truth that surrounds his congregation and other political institutions, making Toller to question his faith.
Paul Schrader once again wrote a very original screenplay in “First Reformed” and I like the fact that he choose trending topics like Global Warming and of course the catholic church.
He created a very complete character in Reverend Toller and we see his constant struggles and internal conflict, which is one of Schrader´s trademarks in his work.
Schrader as always went deep in his characters, specially in Toller and showed us a character who is in a real need and when he meets the character of Mary is like a new chapter for him.
I believe that Schrader is one of the best filmmakers in using the voice over, which is also his trademark. One clear example of this is in “Taxi Driver” where we constantly see the character of Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro using the voice over.
His directing was outstanding and I like how not only got excellent performances of his cast but also the choice of shots in this film. One approach that was very interesting is that he didn´t use too much coverage and opted on using wide shots, specially with the use of dolly tracks which can be a risk if you don´t know how to use the technique properly. Yes, he used his close ups in the scenes that were most critical, but that´s it.
Ethan Hawke gives one of his most outstanding performances of his career. This is a different version from him and he plays Toller with so much realism. This is so far one of the performances that has impacted me the most this year and hopefully we can see him in contention in next year´s awards ceremony.
Amanda Seyfried was very good as well. She played a very different character that has some similarities with Hawke´s and the chemistry they had together in the film works at all levels.
Even Cedric The Entertainer, which here is credited as Cedric Kyles gives a good performance as a serious character, when he normally plays comedic roles but here he did a very good job.
There were two things of this film that really draw my attention:
1) The use of music in this film is minimal but works in the scenes that was used.
2) The ending of this film took me by surprise. I was expecting something else since most of the film takes you through that journey but leaves you thinking what is going to happen with this characters.
“First Reformed” is a film that people are going to talk about it for a while and it´s a good example of how to make a low budget film with a fantastic screenplay.
It´s one of the best year´s film and I highly recommend it for Schrader´s both directing/writing and performances specially Ethan Hawke.