My Ethan Hawke retrospective ends here after eight films - and this is both the most recent and easily my favorite of the bunch. The wintry, spare nature of Paul Schrader's vision might suggest this is a minimalist movie but that description doesn't nearly suffice for a work of art so achingly bursting with ideas, moods, and strange yet familiar associations. Most of that will have to be saved for later analyses; I can only barely scratch the surface in a short podcast review. This is essentially a preliminary reaction to an extraordinary movie...First Reformed, the vivid, crazy, gorgeous 2017 story of a Protestant pastor's crisis of faith (in the world rather than his religion) is a subject I hope to write, create videos, and otherwise talk about for years to come. But I wanted to record my first reaction, a few months after a single viewing. Listeners wrote in when I originally shared this on my patron podcast, and I've included their feedback at the end of this public episode. I see this as the beginning of a discussion, and hope anyone reading this who has thoughts and feelings about this film - and how could you not? - will send them my way. Let's keep that discussion going.
This will probably be the last public podcast of the year although I may, but probably won't, produce a bonus episode around New Year's. A new season beginning on January 13 - to be collected from random reviews rather than a thematic grouping (I'll save another of those for next fall).
