First Reformed (2017)
Director: Paul Schrader
Plot Synopsis[]
A minister (Ethan Hawke) of a small congregation in upstate New York grapples with mounting despair brought on by tragedy, worldly concerns and a tormented past.
Male Deaths[]
- Philip Ettinger [Michael]
- Ethan Hawke [Ernest Toller] (Possibly)
Female Deaths[]
- None
Trivia[]
- Amanda Seyfried was pregnant during the production.
- Shot in 20 days on a $3.5m budget.
- Writer/director Paul Schrader stated in a Q&A at the Rotterdam Film Festival 2018 that he was surprised while editing the film to notice how many similarities there were with Taxi Driver (1976), a film he also wrote.
- This is the first movie in which Cedric the Entertainer is credited under his real name, Cedric Kyles.
- Unusually shot in 4:3 ratio. Paul Schrader was inspired to shoot this way by Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida (2013) as he liked the way it framed the human body. Schrader also liked the sense of claustrophobia that the framing suggests.
- In earlier days, Ethan Hawke once considered becoming a priest.
- After a lengthy acclaimed career, First Reformed (2017) marked the first time that Paul Schrader was nominated for an Academy Award.
- Paul Schrader was motivated to write the screenplay based on his despair at the effect of climate change on the planet.
- Paul Schrader considered Jake Gyllenhaal and Oscar Isaac for the lead role, but he opted for Ethan Hawke instead. Hawke was ten years older and had an innate air of world-weariness that was appropriate for the role.
- Writer/director Paul Schrader stated in an interview this film would be different from what he had ever done, calling it a film more in the vein of Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, and Andrei Tarkovsky.
- Inspiration for First Reformed (2017) came partly from Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1951). In it, a young priest in residence among distant villagers writes a diary where he questions his capacity to help spiritually his parishioners while hurting from a mysterious stomach sickness.