Blu-ray Review: First Reformed (2017)

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There's something immediately lonely about Robert De Niro in that Taxi Driver hallway, something so Christ-like about Last Temptation's man on the cross – Willem Dafoe – that you know in this world he must be a Light Sleeper, and something potent enough about Ethan Hawke's voice and speech rhythms that make you think he could've been a priest.

And it's a role the actor has said he wanted to play in real life, had – fortunately for us – he not received an altogether different calling to perform. It's also a thing that he has in common with his First Reformed writer/director Paul Schrader, who grew up as a self-described "church kid" and even entered the seminary (like Martin Scorsese, who directed Schrader's most iconic scripts) before he too left for a life in film.

Schrader's first screenplay aside from his adaptation of Christ and an unproduced transcendental work he penned forty years ago that deals with the struggles faced by a man of faith, in First Reformed, Hawke's Reverend Toller carries on the legacy of a Schrader leading man.

A loner, a light sleeper, a man in his room – at the start of the film Toller begins keeping a diary he intends to destroy in a year. Evaluating what we come to recognize as a Christ-like existential crisis of faith after Mary, a beautiful young, pregnant parishioner (played by Amanda Seyfried) asks him to counsel her troubled husband Michael (Philip Ettinger), we learn fairly quickly that Toller is one man upon whom life has indeed taken a toll.

Much like Robert De Niro's bickering traveler Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Schrader has always loved using wordplay in his names. Film as a treasure hunt, sure enough in and beneath every frame, Reformed drips with enough symbolism that with only a mere two years of Catholic school more than twenty years ago, I was able to identify at least some of it.

From Seyfried's unexpectedly pregnant Mary to a reference to Joseph, a lustful Esther, and most crucially Michael – whose archangel-like fight to protect the environment from hypocritical corporations including the one that almost single-handedly keeps Toller's small historic church financially afloat raises revelatory, Revelations worthy reactions in Hawke's reverend – the excellent First must play even better on a second or third viewing.

In other words? It's Schrader's Stations of the Cross and a film about which the less you know going in the better.

With Hawke sharing a name with the German expressionist playwright Ernst Toller who met with tragedy (and whose life might help you see First Reformed's ambiguous ending in a different light), the unadorned, straightforward work is as old-fashioned as Toller's eponymous two-hundred and fifty year old, Dutch colonial First Reformed Church in Snowbridge, New York.

Using very little music and mostly static shots save for the glorious bookends of the film and one utterly thrilling, expressionistic sequence infused with transcendentalism (the kind the real Toller would've loved) which leads us perfectly into Reformed's third act, Reformed is a square framed Bergmanesque production. It's also that rare film where there is an actual reason for the wash of color and light visible in each shot.

Reminiscent of The White Ribbon in spirit and style, First Reformed is essentially a black and white film in color. Using all of the cinematic tools at Schrader's disposal to underscore First's questions of conscience and faith, the shades in Toller's formerly black and white but increasingly gray world are muted throughout, save for a few key moments when the ethereal Seyfried manages to throw back the shutters and let in the allegorical sunlight.

Anchored by Hawke, who like De Niro and Dafoe in Schrader's works before him at last gets a chance to turn up the dial in what was already inside of him, First Reformed makes the most of the brooding, wise beyond his years, pastoral philosopher that's been there since Reality Bites and Before Sunrise.

A quality that drives one of my best friends nuts but thrills his fans, while the thing I like to call Hawke's Hawkeness is on full display here, it's amazing to see – especially given the skills of the man penning the script – just how much isn't even spoken but instinctual, internalized, and evident in not Dafoe this time but Hawke's light sleeping eyes.

While the film itself might divide those looking for easy answers, it features not only one of the actor's most powerful performances but one on the opposite end of the spectrum from his delightful shaggy dog, laid back rocker turn in 2018's Juliet, Naked (which I also saw for the first time and reviewed this week).

Serving up an eye-opening commentary track with the helmer on the newly released Blu-ray (that's essentially film school in a box), Reformed is a daring American picture that you'll immediately want to discuss.

Schrader's strongest film as a writer/director since the underrated Affliction, while blessing his fans with another one of what Travis Bickle called God's lonely men (only this time literally), he's created a work that will be remembered as one of not just 2018's but Schrader's very best.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: The Canyons (2013) -- Unrated Director's Cut

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When it comes to Paul Schrader, there’s much to be said; more still when it comes to discussing his skill as a writer versus director but when it comes to the disaster that is The Canyons, you can’t say he wasn’t warned – repeatedly – from start to finish.

Dismissed as “pornography” by his actress wife Mary Beth Hurt who quit reading the script just fifty pages in and described as “a pranky noirish thriller” by its screenwriter, American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis, the end result is something in between, which is one of the movie’s biggest problems in that it’s never sure what it wants to be or which story it’s trying to tell.

 

Centering primarily on a bored, sexually adventurous young Hollywood couple comprised of emotionally detached, arrogant trust fund baby Christian (James Deen) and his former-model turned trophy girlfriend Tara (Lindsay Lohan) he makes a habit of filming in self-directed adult movies on his smartphone, The Canyons initially seems preoccupied with the role of technology in our private lives before veering into melodrama territory.

 

As such, The Canyons moves from Eyes Wide Shut to a Dangerous Liaisons infused Affair to Remember upon revealing that Tara has been two-timing Christian with Ryan (Nolan Funk), the love of her (old poor) life, whom she meets again when he auditions for a part on Christian’s movie.

Yet in revisiting Schrader’s favorite themes of sexual obsession, envy among the classes, loneliness and alienation which he touched on earlier in his career, the film’s ideas, cinematic influences and use of homage are far more exciting than anything that actually happens onscreen in the lives of its dull, unlikable characters.

 

Following an intriguing opening montage filled with images of closed, rundown movie theaters, we’re fooled into thinking that Schrader and Ellis are serving up an allegory addressing the death of cinema as the leads use their smartphones for smut, televisions for texting and keep each other at arm’s length by using various screens (from phones to computers) as a shield.

Unfortunately, this issue isn’t carried consistently enough throughout the film as technology takes a backseat to Gaslight tactics as Christian plays mind games with Tara and Ryan.

From asking his assistant Gina (Amanda Brooks) to invite Tara to lunch and report back to him to hiring another man to follow his girlfriend around, Christian’s need to control and manipulate culminates in a random act of violence that doesn’t make much sense in any way other than to give our internalized, villainous plotter something external to do that isn’t sexual for a change.

 

All of this sounds more riveting than it is and in all actuality, it should be thrilling to noir fans but everything in The Canyons moves onscreen at the pace of a snail – cut together in long, silent takes that are completely out-of-sync with the way the characters actually experience them given their short attention spans and need for technological stimuli.

Rather than the fly-on-the-wall observation employed in The Bling Ring that brings us right into a materialistic young Hollywood environment, everything about The Canyons feels so artificially out-of-touch that it makes the Blu-ray’s roughly hundred minute unrated version feel more than twice the length.

So intrigued yet baffled by the rough cut that even Steven Soderbergh offered to re-edit the film in three days – to which Schrader passed – The Canyons is further proof that the brilliant screenwriter just isn’t a good fit for the director’s chair.

 

A gifted storyteller whose work on Taxi Driver and Raging Bull should be required reading for aspiring screenwriters, Schrader once had to promise George C. Scott he would never direct another film just to get him to leave his trailer on the set of Hardcore after the actor dubbed him “the worst goddamned director in the world.”

While that’s over-stating the case a bit as Blue Collar and the underrated Light Sleeper are proof that he does have a knack for visual storytelling, perhaps the most disappointing thing about The Canyons is that it doesn’t play to Schrader’s strength in collaborating with Ellis on what is at heart a far too internalized character drama to create a tale well worth telling onscreen. Instead, Ellis is simply writer to Schrader's director.

 

Wasting the undeniable talent of Lindsay Lohan, whose subtle performance is overshadowed by Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? level makeup that suggests a future for the film as a camp classic, The Canyons boasts some compelling ingredients for a paranoid Tinsletown set Dangerous Liaison but buries them in long takes that convey nothing but silence, boredom and disappointment.

 

While it easily ensures viewers are as disinterested as the characters onscreen no matter how much nudity we see, we have one advantage over Lohan’s Tara in existing on this side of the celluloid as we have the ability to turn off The Canyons at anytime whereas film is permanent.

Thus perhaps unintentionally Schrader’s film winds up answering the question posed by the opening credits of what killed cinema after all with the answer being misanthropic movies centered on characters we wouldn’t want to spend five minutes with in real life... as evidenced in The Canyons.

And while there's much more to discuss with regard to Schrader – warned as much as he was, unfortunately, we can't say he didn't see it coming early enough to change it for the better right from the start.    

More from Paul Schrader

 

Text ©2013, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

The Walker

Director: Paul Schrader

Whether they’re shopping with Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, dancing with Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding, impregnating Madonna in The Next Best Thing, or serving as Jennifer Aniston’s shoulder to cry on in The Object of My Affection, in the late 1990’s with Will & Grace's Debra Messing and Eric McCormack making their debut as television’s perfect couple combination, American straight women learned that while our heterosexual male counterparts are always unpredictable, a good loyal and loving gay best friend never goes out of style. However, leave it to Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader to find a new noir inspired approach to the cliché with the final installment of his “lonely man” trilogy, The Walker, which followed American Gigolo and the underrated, sharply executed Light Sleeper.

Instead of simply being utilized to button hard to reach buttons, dish about Dior, or serve as a handsome stand-in when their husbands are out of town, the wealthy and witty Carter Page III (Woody Harrelson) who specializes in gossip but dabbles in real estate one day per week to have a day job finds his primary role as a “walker” (escorting the wealthy political wives from place to place in Washington D.C.) threatened after he helps his closest friend Lynn Lockner (Kristin Scott Thomas) escape the scene of a murder when she finds her lover stabbed. Fearing that the crime and evidence of her extramarital affair will destroy everything important to both herself and her husband, the Senate Minority Leader Larry Lockner (Willem Dafoe), Lynn and Carter flee. But when Carter returns to the apartment to look over everything himself and is spotted by a neighbor, he finds himself implicated in the crime as the top suspect in the ongoing investigation by power hungry Attorney General Mungo Tennant (William Hope) and Washington D.C. Detective Dixon (Geoff Francis), both of whom suspect that Lynn is somehow involved with the killing.

Featuring superb, subtly drawn portrayals of neglected yet deceptively innocent Washington wives by veteran performers including Lily Tomlin and the legendary Lauren Bacall who gets the chance to say some of the film’s best lines, The Walker begins very strongly. However, it seems to grow increasingly muddled as the film nears a conclusion and Schrader abandons his film noir roots and the lonely overtone that began the film in favor of attempting to make it a shrewd Washington D.C. scandalous political piece that never seems to come together in a way that pays off believably for the viewer.

Despite this, it’s of particular interest not only to Schrader’s fans but especially those who are eager to explore Harrelson’s range as he begins the film in a slightly hammy Truman Capote styled manner that makes the overtly gay Carter seem a bit like a caricature before getting a unique and compelling handle on the man. Although ultimately there’s so much more to Carter than Schrader can incorporate into a regular feature length work as there’s some intriguing back story involving his father that was begging to be explored, Schrader really commands our interest in Harrelson’s scenes with the terrifically gifted supporting star Moritz Bleibtreu who plays Carter’s longsuffering Middle Eastern paparazzi photographer on-again/off-again boyfriend Emek Yoglu.

While Light Sleeper still feels like the most successful work, minus that film’s obvious shortcomings, Schrader’s sophisticated if admittedly flawed Walker still feels far more intelligent and contemplative than other films in both the political and noir genres and reminds us once again of his outstanding flair for mature, nuanced, and complicated dialogue.