First Reformed

First Reformed is a 2017 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Paul Schrader. It stars Ethan Hawke as a minister of a small congregation in upstate New York who grapples with mounting despair brought on by tragedy, worldly concerns, and a tormented past. Amanda Seyfried, Cedric Kyles, Victoria Hill, and Philip Ettinger appear in supporting roles.

The film had its world premiere at the 74th Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2017, and was theatrically released in the United States on May 18, 2018, by A24. It grossed $4 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics, who mostly praised Hawke's performance and Schrader's direction and writing. Both the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute selected First Reformed as one of the top ten films of 2018, and Schrader was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 91st Academy Awards for his work on the film. At the 24th Critics' Choice Awards, Hawke was nominated for Best Actor and Schrader won Best Original Screenplay, and, at the 34th Independent Spirit Awards, the film garnered nominations for Best Feature, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, while Hawke won Best Male Lead.

Plot
As an experiment, Reverend Ernst Toller has decided to write down his daily activities and unfiltered thoughts in a journal for one year, planning to destroy the resulting record when he is done. His church, First Reformed of Snowbridge, Albany County, New York, is an old Dutch Reformed church that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad, but now it is mostly a tourist attraction. The congregation is tiny, and it was bought some years ago by Pastor Joel Jeffers' Abundant Life church, an evangelical megachurch in Albany, which pays the bills.

After the service one Sunday, Toller is approached by Mary Mensana, a pregnant parishioner who is seeking counseling for Michael, her radical-environmentalist husband. Toller visits Michael at his home, and the two have a spirited discussion. Michael relates how he wants Mary to get an abortion because he does not want to bring a child into a world that will soon be rendered almost uninhabitable by climate change, and Toller counters by telling Michael how, before he came to First Reformed, he was a military chaplain, but left the service after his son, Joseph, who he encouraged to enlist in the military, died in the Iraq War and his wife left him. Not wanting Michael to feel responsible for taking a child from the world, as he does, Toller offers to help the young man search for the courage to overcome his despair, and they arrange to meet again.

Mary finds an under-construction explosive suicide vest in her garage and alerts Toller. He comes over and takes it away, saying he will discuss it with Michael at their meeting, and agrees not to tell the police, as he feels that would only worsen Michael's state.

Michael sends a text message asking Toller to meet him in a local park. Toller arrives to find Michael dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound. In accordance with Michael's will, a service is held at a local toxic-waste dump, where his ashes are scattered while an environmental protest song is sung.

Meanwhile, plans are underway to celebrate the 250th anniversary of First Reformed with a reconsecration service that will be attended by the mayor and governor. Edward Balq, one of Abundant Life's key financial backers and the CEO of BALQ Industries, has taken on the ceremony as his personal project. During a meeting with Toller and Jeffers in a diner, Balq takes issue with Michael's memorial service, which he says was a political statement that involved Abundant Life via Toller's participation. They end up arguing over climate change, Balq dismissing it as "complicated" and Toller saying it is a straightforward matter of Christian stewardship, and Balq ends the discussion by shaming Toller for his failure to help Michael.

Reluctantly, to diagnose the cause of his worsening physical pain, which may be caused by and/or the cause of his alcoholism, Toller finally sees a doctor, who suspects stomach cancer and schedules some tests. Toller begins to go through Michael's laptop computer, which he took after Michael's suicide to prevent the police from discovering anything on it that might make trouble for Mary, and finds information about the large environmental impact of Balq's company. Isolated and facing his mortality, Toller gradually becomes radicalized and completes Michael's suicide vest, which he did not destroy like he told Mary he would.

One night, a panicked Mary visits Toller in the parsonage of the church, and he offers to play Michael's role in a nonsexual rite of physical intimacy that she mentions the couple used to perform when she would get anxious. The experience leads Toller to have a vision that shifts from views of natural beauty to images of ecological devastation.

Toller firmly tells Mary not to attend the reconsecration, and she agrees. Just before the ceremony, he puts on the suicide vest and arms it, but then he sees Mary entering the church. Frantic, he removes the vest, wraps himself in a length of barbed wire he previously found in the church's cemetery, and dons his alb. He fills a glass with drain cleaner and is about to drink it, when Mary interrupts him. They kiss passionately before an abrupt cut to black.

Production
The restrained style of First Reformed recalls the films of Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Carl Theodor Dreyer that Schrader wrote about in his 1972 book Transcendental Style in Film. Elements of the script allude to Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1951), Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light (1963), and the work of Dreyer, as well as Schrader's own script for Taxi Driver (1976). Schrader said that Paweł Pawlikowski's film Ida (2013) inspired him to shoot in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, saying it "drives the vertical lines, so you get more of the human body in the frame." Before approaching Seyfried, Schrader discussed casting Michelle Williams in the role of Mary.

Principal photography lasted 20 days, with a budget of $3.5 million. The film was shot around Brooklyn and Queens, New York, including the building and grounds of the Zion Episcopal Church in Douglaston.

Release
First Reformed premiered in the main competition section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2017. It was also screened at the 44th Telluride Film Festival on September 2, and at the 42nd Toronto International Film Festival on September 12.

In September 2017, A24 acquired the film's North American distribution rights. It was given a limited theatrical release in the United States on May 18, 2018, and was theatrically released in the United Kingdom on July 13, 2018. The screenplay was published by Archway Editions on January 31, 2023, with an introduction by Masha Tupitsyn.

Box office
Its opening weekend, the film made $100,270 from four theaters, averaging $25,067 per screen—one of the best per-screen averages of Schrader's career. By the end of its theatrical run, it had grossed $3,448,256 in the United States and Canada and $540,356 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $3,988,612.

Critical response
A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote: "First Reformed wrestles with contemporary reality, but it isn't a work of realism in the way that term is conventionally understood. The dialogue is delivered with formal, almost stiff cadences, and the images are crisp, graceful and plain." Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times described the film as "a cinephile's delight and a believer's conundrum, an austere American art film with a bracing B-movie soul, and a story in which the cruelest of cosmic punchlines may finally be no different from the most beautiful accession of grace." David Sims of The Atlantic called the film "a tale of existential woe [...] an embittered look at our world through the eyes of someone who’s increasingly horrified to be a part of it, and a film that’s one of the most searing cinema experiences of the year." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian said that "the sheer Bunyanesque severity of this film is as refreshing as a glass of ice-cold water", and called it "a passionately focused film but not a masterpiece", noting that the name of the lead character is an allusion to the German playwright Ernst Toller. Michael Phillips of The Chicago Tribune stated that "for such a deliberate exercise in a specific, methodical style, First Reformed is oddly bracing, full of unresolved, contradictory, vital ideas."

Accolades
The film received nominations at the 34th Independent Spirit Awards for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, and Hawke won the award for Best Male Lead. At the 24th Critics' Choice Awards, the film was nominated for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay, winning the latter. Schrader and Hawke were awarded Best Screenplay and Best Actor, respectively, at the 28th Gotham Independent Film Awards. Both the National Board of Review and American Film Institute listed First Reformed as one of the Top 10 Films of 2018, and the National Board of Review also gave Schrader their award for Best Original Screenplay. Schrader's screenplay was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 91st Academy Awards, marking the first Oscar nomination of his long filmmaking career.