The Reverend Travis Bickle

“What is your only comfort in life and in death? That I belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful savior….” The first words uttered in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed are the famous first question of the Heidelberg Catechism – the Reformed creed that for centuries was the foundation of Sunday evening sermons in Reformed churches. In the film, the creed is being recited by the congregation of First Reformed Church, a dying congregation near Albany, New York. The words are spoken but they are empty doctrine that provide no comfort for the church’s pastor, who is in the midst of a major crisis of faith.

Paul Schrader is widely regarded as one of the great film writers of the past half-century, having collaborated with Martin Scorsese three times, including his masterpieces Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Schrader’s directorial efforts have been less successful, although he has enjoyed the occasional critical success (American Gigolo, Affliction). His latest effort, First Reformed, which he both wrote and directed, has garnered a 97% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 83% positive score on Metacritic, making it one of this year’s most critically acclaimed films.

First Reformed, which debuted at Venice last August and is just now being released in the U.S., is being hailed as the culmination of Schrader’s career, integrating many of the motifs that have characterized his work. It is the story of the Rev. Ernst Toller (as in “ask not for whom the bell tolls…”), the pastor of a dying church in upstate New York experiencing a crisis of faith as his church nears its 250^th anniversary. Played by Ethan Hawke, Toller spends more time tending the headstones in the church cemetery than the dwindling members of his flock. He is, like most Schrader protagonists, a loner struggling with the apparent absence of God in a morally bankrupt world. A former Army chaplain, Toller is suffering in body and spirit, having experienced a personal tragedy that has unmoored both his life and faith. When he is brought into the lives of a young pregnant woman named Mary (Amanda Seyfried) and her radical environmentalist husband Michael (Phillip Ettinger), he is forced to confront his own internalized anger and despair. Following the pattern of Taxi Driver anti-hero Travis Bickle (“one of these days a real rain’s going to come and wash this scum off the streets”), Toller assumes the role of the apocalyptic prophet, the agent of divine judgment.

In First Reformed we see echoes of other films – most notably Luc Besson’s Diary of a Country Priest, and Ingmar Bergman’s existential trilogy Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence. But whereas those classics spoke with theological nuance, First Reformed lacks spiritual sophistication. Mirroring the culture that Schrader derides, his characters are theological caricatures drawn on the one hand to simplistic debate and on the other to Manichaean extremism. The most egregious caricature is ecclesiastical – the dying “traditional” congregation contrasted with the high-tech, big-money non-denominational “Abundant Life Church” embodying what sociologist Talcott Parsons termed a “tension-reduction, pattern-maintenance” social function. Abundant Life’s well-tailored pastor (played by Cedric the Entertainer) courts the support of mega-polluting business owner Edward Balq (Michael Gaston).

The theological tropes in the film are obvious and cliché: blood atonement, the Holy Family, religious hypocrisy, even “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” They are presented, almost like celebrity cameos, but are never addressed meaningfully. Schrader could have used a technical adviser on ministry: almost nothing about Rev. Toller rings true to the experience of actual mainline ministers, especially in the second decade of the 21^st century. One wonders if Toller ever went to seminary, or ever attended a boundaries-training event. Several actions that are presented as normative pastoral care and are crucial to the narrative are contrary to everything a trained Army chaplain or mainline minister would have been taught. These might be lost on the average film-goer or critic, but they are fatal to the film’s credibility with actual ministers.

Schrader’s cinematic style is on full display in First Reformed: the visual symbolism of light and darkness (or dawn and dusk) in his settings and cinematography; the ominous score which highlights the spiritual battle of good and evil. The film is even shot in 4:3 aspect, as if to highlight the narrow, cramped, constrained faith of the religious world Schrader portrays. 

First Reformed may be the culmination of Schrader’s cinematic faith journey. But it is not a journey that looks anything like real spiritual crises. The performances are laudable, but the theology is laughable. Two stars out of four (2.0/4.0).

Southern Exposure

Ebbing, Missouri is a lot like Cicely, Alaska, the setting of the 1990s TV show Northern Exposure. Both are small fictional towns filled with quirky individuals from a variety of backgrounds who all seem to know each other, and despite lacking formal education can summon culture and wisdom at odd times. Both, in their own ways, represent visions of American society. But whereas Cicely was a vision of Clinton-era America, where differences are celebrated and even the bigot and the homophobe can find a welcome, Ebbing is a vision of Trump-era America where differences are mocked and punished, and the racists and homophobes are in charge. If the former viewed America through rose-colored glasses, the latter shows it as in a fun-house mirror, full of bizarre and horrific distortions.

Ebbing, of course, is the setting for the Indie-darling film Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, which won the Golden Globe for best dramatic film, along with acting awards for lead actress Frances McDormand and supporting actor Sam Rockwell. It has been nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture.

McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, the grieving mother of a teenage daughter who had been raped and murdered seven months earlier. The local police department, headed by police chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) and his dim-witted racist deputy Jason Dixon (Rockwell) have apparently been too busy harassing the African-Americans in town to investigate the crime. Dixon is Barney Fife to Willoughby’s Andy Taylor, with the same thinly veiled but deeply repressed homosexuality, which in Dixon’s case emerges in violent eruptions towards the towns gay advertising company owner and the African-Americans in his custody.

Hayes, a domestic abuse survivor and single mother, sponsors messages on three billboards accusing Willoughby of dragging his feet on the investigation. The billboards attract media attention and divide the community – most people siding with the police chief. But Hayes has the support of a company of outcasts – the gay billboard owner, two African-Americans, and the local dwarf with unrequited affection for Hayes. A series of melodramatic twists ensue, with escalating violence, with an ending that serves more as a Rorschach test than a resolution.

Ebbing is supposedly in the Ozarks of southern Missouri, where ignorant, poor white folk get their jollies harassing those who are “different.” But the film is all caricature rather than character, unlike the far superior 2010 film Winter’s Bone, set in the same locale. Sometimes the caricatures are played for cheap laughs (“It’s no longer n****r torture, it’s ‘people-of-color torture’”); sometimes it is played straight. But it’s always *played*. Events coincide too conveniently; there is violence but never accountability, and the offenders are given all-too-easy reconciliation. There is pseudo-wisdom (“anger only begets more anger”) and shallow theology – together with an ineffectual priest and cheap shots at organized religion.

The Oscar-nominated screenplay is by British writer-director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges), but rather than providing the insight of an outsider’s view of our society, it relies on caricature and lacks a true sense of place or regional culture. Despite having a realistic tone, it represents a Hollywood understanding of race and class in rural America, which may be why Hollywood has given it high praise. Like Trump’s own vision of America, it is a manufactured truth designed for emotional impact rather than something showing genuine understanding.

That having been said, the film has snappy dialogue, is well-paced, and has some of the best acting of any film this year, notably by the Oscar-nominated McDormand, Rockwell, and Harrelson, whose performances make the film worthy of seeing. It’s enjoyable in the same way as dining at Taco Bell and Panda Express – the food is mostly empty calories, but it’s tasty so long as you don’t mistake it for the real cuisine. Some critics call it “Coen Brothers lite.” I tend to agree.

2.5 stars out of 4.0. Rated R for excessive profanity, and some violence and gore.

The Shape of WTF?!?

This week, Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water led all films with 13 Academy Awards nominations, making it the early favorite for Best Picture of 2017. Del Toro is also heavily favored to win the Best Director Oscar, joining countrymen Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, 2014) and Alejandro Iñárittu (Birdman, 2015 and The Revenant, 2016) as recent winners of the coveted award.

Del Toro, who not only directed, but also created the story and co-wrote the screenplay, seems to have developed The Shape of Water with Oscar in mind: it is an amalgam of every Hollywood “how to win an Oscar” cliché short of bashing Nazis. It has the “lost alien vs the military/ scientific/ industrial menace” theme; the “revenge against toxic masculinity, sexism, racism, ableism, and homophobia” theme; the “overcoming disability to discover true love” and the “my disability is a symbol of a social evil” themes; the “classic Hollywood movies as sacrament” theme; “the evil, Bible-quoting Christian” villain; and the “all you need is love” crowd-pleasing, fairy tale ending. Throw in some Mad Men 1960s-era cultural references for all the Baby Boomer voters of the Academy, and voilà – you have the perfect Oscar candidate.

Pardon me while I throw up. Some of my most revered film critics adore this mess, but to me, The Shape of Water is simply an over-the-top, silly, derivative fantasy about the evils of toxic masculinity that insults literate viewers more than it inspires.

From the incredulous opening credit sequence (heavy, metal objects don’t stay suspended in water, they sink) and the ridiculous opening bathtub scene to the E.T. meets The Little Mermaid (Feminist Fantasy Version) predictable ending, the film doesn’t utilize fantasy as a tool to expand our imagination (à la magical realism); rather, it severs all ties to reality and abuses fantasy for emotional manipulation and to score cheap political points.

For the record, The Shape of Water follows the plight of a Cold-War “asset” – a merman of sorts (played in scaly costume by Doug Jones) discovered in the Amazon with dual respiratory systems allowing him to live either on land or in water. He is brought to, confined at, and later enchained in, a secret lab in Baltimore where Elisa (Sally Hawkins) and Zelda (Octavia Spencer) are part of the custodial crew. Elisa is unable to speak, having suffered some unknown childhood condition that has left her with three parallel scars on either side of her neck, and no working vocal cords. The military-national security complex views the asset through Cold War eyes as a possible boon to space exploration (not really explained), and after some pointless torture with a cattle-prod by security agent Richard Strickland (cartoonishly played by Michael Shannon), the “brass” thinks it is more valuable to them as a post-mortem research subject. Meanwhile, Elisa, whose disability becomes an opportunity to communicate with the creature through sign language and music, recognizes a kindred spirit, and less convincingly, an object of love and desire. A semi-comic rescue sequence ensues, assisted by an embedded Soviet spy, with the now-iconic E.T. race to set the creature free. This is a Hollywood PC depiction of 1960s America: awash in toxic masculinity, toxic religion, white supremacy, fascism, and homophobia. The heroes are the women, gay men, minorities, and immigrants who love without judgment and resist without fear, all inspired by the stories of classic Hollywood either directly or by homage.

Del Toro is a student of film, and it shows. As a director who specializes in blending fantasy, horror, and romance he has drawn from a rich library of cinematic tropes, archetypes, texts, and references for the story, most notably The Creature from the Black Lagoon, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and his own Pan’s Labyrinth. But the most useful lens to view the film is as a counter-fantasy to Disney’s The Little Mermaid, which was excoriated by feminists upon its release for glamorizing a boy-crazy girl who gives up her voice to land her “prince.” The Shape of Water, by contrast, depicts a voiceless woman who nevertheless finds a “voice” to bring liberation and love to others. Not surprisingly, the initial symbol of her liberation is an egg – a uniquely female object.

Oddly, for a film literally saturated in water, the titular metaphor remains a mystery. Is it a metaphor of our origin and destiny (the film starts and ends underwater)? If so, I don’t quite see its relevance. It seems to exist more for effect than message. Even in the most ridiculous scene of the film, in which a good-sized bathroom is literally flooded to the ceiling (in a matter of minutes, with no structural consequences) the fantasy effect overwhelms both reason and meaning.

The mess of a story aside, the film is deserving of accolades for its technical brilliance. It is beautifully filmed, with a soundtrack and score (by Alexandre Desplat) that are wonderful. Some of the acting is exceptional, most notably Richard Jenkins as Giles, Elisa’s neighbor and friend; and Spencer. Hawkins is solid as Elisa, despite what she must endure in this ridiculous script.

Del Toro is a capable film-maker and will undoubtedly get his share of awards if for no other reason than he knows what buttons to push. As for me, all I could think after viewing the film was “WTF was that?!”

The Shape of Water is rated R for sex, nudity, gore, and violence. 2.0 stars out of 4 (2.5 stars out of 4 for film buffs).