Dérive

  “I have decided to keep a journal to set down all my thoughts and the simple events of my day,” writes a hunched man, sitting at a barren desk in a sparsely furnished room, kept company only by a bottle and small glass. “I will keep the diary for one year, and at the end of that time, it will be destroyed.” So begins the story of Rev. Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke), a middle-aged pastor at the center of Paul Schrader’s searing new film First Reformed . Schrader, a longtime writer and director best known for writing Taxi Driver , uses Toller’s crisis of faith to explore some of our most important societal issues, including climate change, isolation and suicide. First Reformed also explores, if less overtly, who controls capitalist cultural and political institutions, and what we should do about it. Toller presides over a Dutch Reform church in upstate New York. Once a safe haven along the Underground Railroad, First Reformed is now little more than a gift shop, attr...