First Reformed

FIRST REFORMED              C+                                          

USA  (113 mi)  2017 d:  Paul Schrader

Loneliness has followed me my whole life — everywhere — in bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores — everywhere.  There’s no escape.  I’m God’s lonely man.

—Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver (1976), written by Paul Schrader

A crisis in faith film, made for people who feel suffocated by an overly repressive church, who prefer, like writer/director Paul Schrader, a tortuous existence, with suffering a stand-in for religious commitment, as if it could wipe away the sins of the world.  Associated with Scorsese as a screenwriter in films like Taxi Driver (1976), RAGING BULL (1980), and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988), Schrader grew up attending the Calvinist Christian Reformed Church, never seeing a film until he was in his late teens, early on training to become a minister, where it is significant that roughly three out of 10 Protestant leaders describe their church as “Calvinist or Reformed,” a proportion statistically unchanged from a decade earlier (according to a 2010 Barna poll, So there is no NeoReformed/New Calvinist movement - Patheos).  The Christian Reformed Church is the American embodiment of the original 16th century reformation movement that became necessary as the Catholic Church spawned corruption and failed to respond to its parishioners, examples being widespread corruption among the Catholic clergy, especially at the top, the practice of torturing people suspected of holding non-orthodox beliefs until they confessed or died, encouraging parishioners to pray to Mary and to the saints (instead of Jesus Christ), also church sales pitches, including fake letters from the Pope, that promised heavenly redemption once money was received.  While popular in the Netherlands and Germany, later an American version arose, becoming the Christian Reformed Church (currently 300,000 members in the United States and Canada).  While narratively modeled after Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d'un curé de campagne) (1951) and Bergman’s WINTER LIGHT (1963), the film lacks the sparseness and transcendent poetry, bearing more of a resemblance to Bruno Dumont’s 2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #5 Hadewijch, as it tries to be a modern parable, complete with contemporary themes, but all in all, it’s overly fatalistic, bearing a gloominess that resembles the tortuous anguish of Scorcese’s Silence (2016).  Ethan Hawke plays Reverend Toller, a pastor with a dwindling congregation at an old Protestant New England parish that’s been around since 1767, part of the Underground Railway, whose historical significance is diminished by being a subsidiary of a much larger modern megachurch.  Leading a solitary existence, giving little thought to his own health or well-being, the film is a morose tale of a despondent priest who grapples with his own existential malaise, himself a former military chaplain, having lost a son in the Iraq War that destroyed his marriage, his road to redemption lies in service to others by practicing his faith, though he’s constantly challenged at every turn, recorded in his yearlong diary, where his bleak inner narration provides the outline of the story, basically a reflection of God’s silence expressed through acute self-loathing, describing an “all-consuming knowledge of the emptiness of all things.”

One of the aspects of neo-Calvinism is a youthful trend of fiery rhetoric that seems rooted by the insular nature of college universities, like think tanks, which have a way of consolidating like-minded thinking, but remain isolated, protecting their inner core while combatting or even condemning outsiders.  This film seems dedicated to the idea of opening up the church to deeply rooted modern era problems that affect us all but seemingly have no answers, which includes ecological nightmare predictions as well as the influence of money in serving the church’s social mission, as the church is often connected to powerful technological interests that may be creating many of the toxic hazards that could diminish or deteriorate any future quality of life.  The church tends to reflect a status quo position, seemingly above the fray, yet may privately be partnering with some of the biggest offenders of toxic waste.  Reverend Toller gets involved in the life of a young married couple at the behest of an ardent believer, Mary (Amanda Seyfried, actually pregnant during the shoot), who is worried about the deteriorating mental state of her non-believing husband Michael (Philip Ettinger), an avowed radical environmentalist who has been arrested, preventing him from continuing to help the cause, losing his faith in the apathy surrounding global consciousness, as there’s little interest in saving the planet, creating nightmare scenarios that he’s all too familiar with, struggling with the notion of losing all hope.  While Reverend Toller makes a genuine attempt to counsel a lost soul, laying the foundation of the internal struggle, “Wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind at the same time: hope and despair,” suggesting despair exists so that God’s hope is that much more meaningful, where overcoming doubt is the real struggle, yet he is himself facing a losing battle with his own inner torment, drinking heavily while eating sparingly, weakened by his own self-inflicted choices, yet carries on to face a new day with revived spiritual interest, as he identifies with Michael’s predicament, himself something of a black sheep among the flock of the devoted, where the parent church, run by Pastor Jeffers (Cedric the Entertainer), couldn’t be more financially successful, viewed throughout the community as a pillar of society.  Exploring the darker regions of society may come naturally for Toller, as he has his own unique familiarity, yet he’s equally as troubled himself, even as he offers guidance and counsel. 

The scenes between Toller and Michael form the inner core of the pastor’s dilemma, with Michael asking, “Can God forgive us for what we’ve done to this world?”  While this question reverberates and echoes throughout the rest of the film, their conversation is intriguing but pales in comparison with Steve McQueen’s HUNGER (2008), for instance, a thoroughly complex film that at its center becomes a twenty-minute uninterrupted dramatic scene contemplating the 1981 Irish hunger strike between prison inmate IRA activist Bobby Sands and a Catholic priest arguing the life and death moral implications.  That is a thoroughly riveting first rate drama, while here, perhaps the most surprising scene is a moment of stark cruelty that occurs out of nowhere (there were audible gasps in the audience) between a former husband and wife, with Toller demeaning and humiliating his ex-wife Esther (Victoria Hill) for expressing an interest in his well-being, egotistic actions that undermine all else, calling into question any other motivations he may have.  In other words, what good is it to find forgiveness with God if you can’t forgive your wife?  She’s a member of his flock that needs shepherding as well.  To utterly give up on her equates him with spewing toxic venom, a parallel with the oil and chemical manufacturers who think only of themselves and their own self-term interests and financial gain, all but ignoring the long-term needs of the planet.  The whole thing feels like a moralist trap, a test of absolutism, vying off to explore just a single branch on the tree of sin, yet becoming consumed by the ramifications, clouded by errant judgment, never really seeing the forest through the trees, arguably accepting martyrism as a way out (more short-term speculation), which in the full scope of things only diminishes the overall impact, leaving more to be done by future generations to clean up the mess you left behind.  While Toller’s plan of action remains initially ambiguous, where rational thought turns metaphysical and surreal, with doubts swirling around his head, moving from one possibility to another, with lingering afterthoughts, yet the final implications are clear, whiffing in his moment of truth, coming up empty, ultimately drowning in his own self-pity, lost in the vacuousness of an ethical collapse.  While it’s commendable taking a moral interest in difficult and all-encompassing social positions, similar to Father Daniel Berrigan, a Catholic priest who worked actively in the 60’s against the Vietnam War, putting him on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list (eventually  serving two years in prison), the first priest to make the list, yet this film never rises to that level of plausibility, as few American priests ever put themselves on the line like that (unlike the many Baptist pastors in the Civil Rights movement), where the moral convictions would have to be more than mere speculation.  The idea of equating radical environmental activism with extreme religious conviction seems misguided, having more in common with martyrdom and Islamic jihadism along with other radical misadventures that when put into action would only destabilize a polarized public, where democracy requires convincing an otherwise disinterested public about the merits of your argument.  While this film portrays a wayward priest’s struggle with faith and moral servitude, the chosen path convinces no one, basically betraying his own calling, becoming instead an off-the-rails horror story, with the finale set to a raw and bare-bones rendition (sung by Esther) of the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” chillingly recalled being sung by Robert Mitchum as the phony predator priest in The Night of the Hunter (1955).

Top Five

TOP FIVE                   B+           
USA  (102 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Chris Rock        Official site

Chris Rock, named the heir apparent to Richard Pryor early in his career after his HBO stand-up special CHRIS ROCK:  BRING THE PAIN (1996), while at age 34 he was also named “the funniest man in America” in September 1999 by Time magazine, Seriously Funny - TIME, which places a lot of pressure on a guy to have to be funny all the time.  With the recent suicide of brilliant comic Robin Williams, who often joked about his addiction, or before him Freddie Prinze, or Richard Jeni, one looks at the troubled childhoods of so many comedians who learn to make fun of themselves at an early age, developing a unique ability to make others laugh, often to protect themselves from real life traumas that haunt them throughout their lives.  But imagine the weight on one’s shoulders to be labeled the funniest man in America, where the spotlight is always going to be pointed at you even when you least desire it.  Rock has always handled his stardom admirably, maintaining a center of balance, refusing to serve as a role model while he satirizes and excoriates public figures onstage, as expressed in his 1997 memoir Rock This, “Why does the public expect entertainers to behave better than everybody else?  It’s ridiculous...Of course, this is just for black entertainers.  You don’t see anyone telling Jerry Seinfeld he’s a good role model.  Because everyone expects whites to behave themselves...Nowadays, you’ve got to be an entertainer and a leader.  It’s too much.”  In the open and freewheeling observational style of Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, comedians are actors and stand-up entertainers that offer scorching social commentary, off color jokes, biting satire, and personal autobiographical revelations while also challenging the limits of free speech.  All the best comedians go through a comedy circuit where they do bits and pieces of their stand-up routines in small clubs, which seems to be the Holy Grail of comedy, as it receives far greater adulation and acclaim for actually being funny than movie roles, where Woody Allen has made over 70 motion pictures, but people still persist in believing that his earliest movies that were the closest to his stand-up routines were his funniest.   

To his credit, Rock loves all comedians, past and present, where he’s probably stolen from the best of them, but he continues to showcase his own unique flair onscreen, where his stream-of-conscious style of outrageous humor is simply hilarious, and this film, which he writes, directs, and stars in front of the camera, bears some autobiographical resemblance to Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980), where Allen’s character Sandy Bates is a highly successful film director known for making hilarious comedies, but confesses, “I don’t want to make funny movies any more, they can’t force me to.  I don’t feel funny.  I look around the world and all I see is human suffering.”  In Rock’s film, his character Andre Allen interestingly reveals he was high or drunk at the height of his professional comedy career, and now that he’s sober, the world doesn’t appear so damn funny anymore.  Trying to make more of a positive difference, he makes a serious film where he plays a Django Unchained style, real-life historical figure Dutty Boukman, the leader of a Haitian slave rebellion called UPRIZE, where he’s hoping to make a serious statement without comedy, but it’s flopping miserably as all anyone wants to talk about is Hammy, a crime-fighting bear, a character that he played in three successive blockbuster films, the last one grossing about $600 million dollars, even though he’s done with the role, insisting upon moving on, but reporters aren’t the least bit interested in his sidestepping their questions, knowing their readers can’t get enough of Hammy.  Shot in New York, where much of the film is openly walking down the streets, fixated cries of “Hammy!” can be heard throughout, much like the “Birdman” calls in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014).  No matter how much these guys try to ignore their past, it follows them everywhere, like an embarrassing nickname or a foul rumor they can’t shed, but the real surprise of the film is the complexity of the role written for Rosario Dawson as New York Times journalist Chelsea Brown, who spends a day following Allen around in order to write an extended profile piece on his life.  While he’s obviously at a crossroads in his life and career, where all the tabloids are writing about his upcoming marriage to be broadcast live on Bravo with Reality TV star Erica Long (Gabrielle Union), seemingly matching the pattern of co-producer Kanye West’s marriage to Kim Kardashian, but what’s most intriguing is that Dawson’s more complicated life is exposed right alongside his own, a beautiful contrast to the vapid imagery seen in tabloid journalism, creating one of her best, most down-to-earth and intelligent roles since Spike Lee’s 25th HOUR (2002).    

Actually, the complexity of the secondary roles is equally outstanding, from his loyal bodyguard and chauffeur, JB Smooth as Silk, who’s been his longtime friend since childhood, to the outlandishly freakish role of Cedric the Entertainer as Jazzy Dee, the underground black market mayor of Houston, the guy who can procure anything, anytime, anywhere, where he’s also like a Get Out of Jail Free card, even though hanging around with him is what gets your ass thrown in jail in the first place, where in any other movie his scene-stealing antics would be the highlight, but this film features an overabundance of stars.  Kevin Hart’s scene as Andre’s manager is equally hilarious, where over the phone the two get into an N-word contest, where they delve into the idea of a black man getting into trouble for calling another black man the N-word, which unleashes a barrage of expletives that could only exist in black culture.  Perhaps the highlight of the film is when Andre brings Chelsea into the housing project where he grew up, where we meet Ben Vereen as his alcoholic father and Sherri Shepherd as his mother, where his old friends from the neighborhood are like a who’s who of black stand-up comedy, including Tracy Morgan (before his recent accident), Jay Pharoah, Hassan Johnson, and Leslie Jones, all playing to the journalist, each stepping all over the other to try to offer the real dirt on Andre, where it’s the only scene where the nonstop laughter feels so authentically natural, as this group takes such pleasure in teasing and ribbing one other, where it feels like they’ve been doing it for years, with the group wondering whether Tupac Shakur would be a U.S. Senator today had he lived, or maybe, as Andre suggests, he just might be “playing the bad, dark-skinned boyfriend in a Tyler Perry movie.”  It’s here that they happen upon the theme of the top five rappers of all time, which is like the listing for a nonexistent black hall of fame, yet each distinct choice offers an eye into each personality, as it’s like defining what it is to be black.  Within the context of this enveloping humor, there’s a surprisingly effective “smallness” brought into the film that simply hones in on Andre and Chelsea walking through the streets of New York while opening up about their lives, offering some of the more astute insight into alcoholism, where part of the recovery program is “rigorous honesty.”  Chelsea’s shrewd insight into her own life, remaining honest and forthright throughout, but also flirtatious and funny, is the unexpected star of the film.  While initially the two protect themselves with lies and carefully guarded secrets, but as the film progresses the guard comes down and what we’re treated to is an unexpectedly smart and comically inventive film that veers into an equally clever relationship movie that feels extremely close to the real Chris Rock, which as we all know is nothing short of amazing.