Apocalyptic visions are in vogue at the moment, yet no one has been playing this game for longer than Paul Schrader, who as a young man traded in his ambitions to join the priesthood for a career first as a film critic, then as a writer/director, translating the fire and brimstone of biblical prophecy into the violent fantasies of loners like Travis Bickle from “Taxi Driver.”
His latest, “First Reformed,” might deliver the most fevered vision yet by joining together some of the disparate interests that have defined Schrader’s career. Starring Ethan Hawke as a priest driven to a spiritual crisis, “First Reformed” takes some of the techniques (and specific plot elements) of directors like Bresson and Dreyer that Schrader first made his name analyzing, but despite all of the references, Father Toller is instantly recognizable as a Paul Schrader protagonist.
READ MORE: Paul Schrader’s ‘First Reformed’ Is A Gripping Spiritual Riff On ‘Taxi Driver’ [Review]
Opening Friday via A24 studios, “First Reformed” is an exciting example of reaching across generations to use older aesthetics and philosophies to give a fresh perspective on contemporary problems. I spoke with Paul Schrader about the film’s genesis and themes.
Is it fair to say that this film comes closer than any of your others to the transcendental style you wrote about in the 1970s?
Yes. And I’ve updated that book, coming out next week. I wrote that book before I was a screenwriter and over the years people have tried to connect that book to my films and I said ‘No, that’s not me. I’m not working in that style. You can draw comparisons, but they’re wrong.’ And then about three years ago, after talking to Pawel Pawilowski [the director of “Ida”], I said ‘OK, it’s time. It’s time for you to write that script you said you would never write.’
But why was it time?
Two things. One is age. I was going to be 70 the next year and I said ‘It’s time now.’ But the other is the falling cost of making movies. So a movie that in this country would have been financially irresponsible twenty years ago is less so now because it costs about half as much to make a movie. When I began, I would have made this film in forty-five days, now I made it in twenty. The Europeans who do this sort of film usually get some sort of subsidy, but we get no subsidy so we have to justify everything as a potential return. I was saying to Olivier Assayas, ‘Boy if I was born in France my life would be a lot easier,’ because he get’s like a third of the budget every time. So I just never felt I could convince anyone to make this film because they wouldn’t make any money on it.
Was it refreshing to work within the confines of this more rigorous style?
Oh yes, when you set rules then you have a chance to be creative. Like if I said to you ‘Design a modern chair,’ or, ‘Design a modern chair, for someone who weighs 500 pounds.’ The second one, your mind is already thinking.
So you say ‘OK, we’re going to use this square format, we’re not going to pan, not going to tilt, not going to have music, not going to have expressive acting, that gives you the parameters in which you can work. And the other nice thing about having rules is that you get to break them. So you say we’re never going to dolly and then all of a sudden you put in a dolly. And you might say why make a rule if you’re going to break it? Well, you break it so you can go back and make it again.
There are two scenes that rather spectacularly break the rules, two of the most memorable in my opinion. Did you envision those from the beginning?
Well, with the transcendental style you always break a rule at the end. Whether it’s music or whatever, like in “Ida,” the last shots are moving, moving, moving when the whole film has been static. At the end, you do have to jump out of the material plane in some way. So I wanted to foreshadow that there was a parallel universe just over this one and that we may go there. So I was thinking, ‘How can I do a scene that indicates this?’ And I said to myself quite literally, ‘What would Tarkovsky do?’ Well, he would have them levitate. That’s his go-to position, “The Mirror,” “The Sacrifice.” So I had them levitate, but instead of having them just levitate, like Tarkovsky, I’ll take them on a tour. It’s like the Boschian triptych, “Garden of Earthly Delights.” You start with Eden, you go into the present, and you end up in the underworld.
Are you interested in working in this style again?
I don’t think so. Right now I’m interested in doing something completely different. There’s almost nothing in common between “Dog Eat Dog” and this film. For the next go round, if there is one, I’d like to find a new mountain to climb.
Considering its difficult themes and that it somewhat casts judgment, have you been surprised by the positive reception to this film?
Yep. It’s certainly the most positive reaction I’ve ever had for a film. And it’s strange because I set out to make a cold film and now I’m getting a hot reaction. Shows you how unpredictable these things are. People think they can calculate it, but then they lose it all. It’s hard to calculate. People have responded well. I’ve been with this film for nine months, starting with Venice and Telluride and taking it to festivals all over the world, lecture tour, and I find that the reaction is pretty much the same, whether in Rotterdam or Miami. The film seems to work. How and why, I’m not quite sure.
