Paul Schrader's First Reformed 2017

Schrader's film is grim and downbeat, taking place in upstate N.Y., a place God seems to have forgotten about (I grew up there) and where a traditional church is almost devoid of parishioners and is mostly for tourists, as it gets set to celebrate its 250th anniversary.  Schrader wrote a book when he was a graduate student, Transcendental Style in Film:  Ozu, Bresson and Dryer, and one can see the influence of these three directors in Schrader's latest film:  the camera placement of Ozu, the austerity of Dreyer, the religion of Bresson, especially in  Bresson's Le Journal d'un Cure de Campagne (1950), which, like Schrader's film, has a dying priest writing a diary about his struggle with faith.   I recommend the films of these directors (many of them available on DVD).  In Schrader's film a dying priest in a dying church in a dying town is saved --by love, more or less -- from blowing the whole place up.

Schrader has had a long career, writing (Taxidriver, 1976) as well as directing (American Gigolo 1980) and many of his films, including First Reformed, include attempts to come to terms with his own Calvinist upbringing, his films influenced not only by Bresson's Roman Catholicism but also by the Zen of Ozu and the Protestantism of Dreyer and Ingmar Bergman.