Friday, July 6 | 8:30 pm
Saturday, July 7 | 8:30 pm
Sunday, July 8 | 5:30 pm
Ethan Hawke, in one of the best performances of his career, stars as Reverend Ernst Toller, a Dutch Reformed minister who presides over a dwindling congregation in Upstate New York. When First Reformed opens, the former military chaplain is preparing for the 250th anniversary re-consecration of his picturesque church—now not much more than a tourist destination—with the support of Abundant Life, a nearby mega-church with state-of-the-art facilities. As he navigates a broken organ and a financier of questionable integrity, Toller finds himself enmeshed with a pregnant young churchgoer (Amanda Seyfried) and her despairing radical environmentalist husband. At first invigorated by a theological conversation with the young man, Toller soon finds himself traveling a very similar—and similarly disturbing—path. Drawing heavily upon the 1950 French classic Diary of a Country Priest, Paul Schrader’s (Taxi Driver, Mishima) latest updates the French original within the secularized, twenty-first century landscape of Mainline American Protestantism. What results is a searing and personal cinematic achievement that ranks among the director’s (and the year’s) very best.
Director Paul Schrader | 2017 | In English | 113 minutes | R (for some disturbing violent images) | DCP