First Reformed

Since Paul Schrader's searing 1970s landmarks as a screenwriter (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) and director (Blue Collar, Hardcore), fans have been hankering for a true return to form for the critic turned film-maker. This restrained but powerful contemporary drama about a crossroads reached by self-medicating Father Toller (Ethan Hawke), who tends to a small flock in an Albany, New York church, is that return. Hawke's former army chaplain is no clichéd "whiskey priest"; he's kind, open and thoughtful, despite being in physical pain, which he absorbs as penance for past sins. When Amanda Seyfried's pregnant church-goer asks him to counsel her angry, eco-activist husband (a breakthrough performance from Philip Ettinger), he questions not just his own conscience but the church itself - it's become a local tourist attraction that sells souvenir baseball caps. Schrader maintains masterly control of the material and his intelligent cast (Cedric Kyles drops "the Entertainer" to play the pastor of a donation-reliant megachurch), thanks to long, fixed-camera scenes. Toller's inner life plays out in narrated, ascetic vignettes in a virtually furniture-free house. Meanwhile, a low, ambient score delivers us to a late tonal jack-knife that hints at Schrader's earlier triumphs.