When Movies Are a Religious Journey
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- Опубліковано 4 лют 2025
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If you've watched First Reformed and felt like it changed your life, you're not the only one! First Reformed was Paul Schrader's first attempt at a style of cinema he himself coined back in 1972: the Transcendental Style, and there's a reason it has some an impact. Come along on this spiritual journey.
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SOURCES:
Charles Andrews, “Too Much In the Garden: Paul Schrader’s First Reformed” Michaelmas, vol. LXXXII (1) (2018).
Anthony Carew, “Into the Night, Religion and Environmental Catastrophe in First Reformed” Screen Education, (95) (2019).
Justin Chang, “Review: The bracing ‘First Reformed,’ starring a superb Ethan Hawke, resurrects Paul Schrader’s career” L.A Times (2018).
Daniel Chin, “‘The Boy and the Heron’ Is Hayao Miyazaki’s Most Personal Film, and One of His Most Collaborative” The Ringer (2023).
Philip Horne, “‘We are the killers, and we have to understand that’: Martin Scorsese on Killers of the Flower Moon”, Sight and Sound (2023).
J.R. Jones, “Paul Schrader’s First Reformed finds pride at the root of despair,” Chicago Reader (2018).
Brent Lang “Paul Schrader on the Extinction of the Human Race and His New Film ‘First Reformed’” Variety (2017).
Antonio Machado, "The Wind, One Brilliant Day":
allpoetry.com/...
Sean Nam and Paul Schrader, “Hungering and Thirsting For Righteousness” : Cinéaste , Vol. 43, No. 3 (2018).
Paul Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film, University of California Press (1971).
Olivia Hunter Willke, “Accepting Abomination: On First Reformed”, Hyper Real Film (2022).
guys it's *Antonio Machado - I left a typo in my script and apparently just ran with it lol .... also *Tarkovsky... that one is unforgivable srry
Machado is an interesting drop because he himself turned away from aesthetic principles in his own life.
this is unrelated, but you look really good in this video.
@@musiimealvinMaia is a very pretty woman.
@@kino9978 glad someone else said it. lol. i had to rewatch the video cause i got abit distracted
I expect nothing less from the people who also said that the Dreyfus of the Dreyfus Affair was Richard Dreyfuss.
What a beautifully produced essay, and very insightful too, gave me lots of ideas to consider. Great work on this!
Great seeing another great channel here
It is a good day to have eyes
And ears, my friend.
👁👄👁
This hit hard. Use eye drops my fellow cinema lovers
What did u do today to deserve them
"Transcendence through Ritual" that is exactly the through line that connects all the religions in the world. Kudos this was a great video.
first reformed struck me so deeply when i first watched it , that as the film ended and the credits rolled, i only had one thought that was so foreign to anything i had thought for the past three years. i was raised by very religious parents in an evangelical church, and i was kicked out of home upon being outed as trans. i began identifying as an atheist shortly before i left home, and i resolved myself to always keep an open mind in regards to the faith of others, but that i could never go back again.
but as i sat and let the final moments of the film washed over me, i knew with perfect certainty and with a sick feeling in my stomach that i had to go to a church. it barely mattered where. i had spent long enough frozen in my trauma that i had neglected to turn my gaze upon the universe and allow it to be in conflict with the world i knew.
first reformed remains my favorite film because it evokes something so essential to human nature, the desperation and fear of the seemingly endless monotonous pain and the uncertainty of a world where seemingly no one is granted the grace that seems guaranteed if we have a loving and caring god. if we claim to love god, we must love each other, and yet the modern western christian church on large allies itself with forces of evil, selling away the lives of future marginalized generations of people for the spiritual comfort of the ones alive now who the church deems worthy. the film mediates on the inherent conflict between the need for human connection on a spiritual level and the inherent brokenness that prevents us from attaining that, as well as reckoning with how out of control the material world feels when trying to connect it with the divine. it's changed the way i've thought about my place in the world forever. i went back to church, a presbyterian one rather than an evangelical one, and i'm glad i chose to go back. this world is a hard and lonely place, and i'm glad to have one place of human connection where it's okay to feel lost.
My mum died 7 years ago from a terminal illness, one day before she was gone I broke down at work and had to go home. On the walk home I stopped at a cafe but felt too weird to be in public and then stopped at a church just to have somewhere to sit. I've never been religous or seeked out religion but after that day I started to appreciate the idea of churches. We need public buildings were people can go to sit with their uncertainty.
this is beautiful, thank you for sharing
Wow, this was just so beautifully written. This is my favourite film as well. I love what this movie says about hope and despair, and about carrying contradicting ideas. Humans are inherently contradictory; we are constantly searching for a connection to a higher purpose, and at the same time we push our fellow humans away, when really they are the ones that will understand us and make our lives better. I don't believe in God, but I do believe that human connection allows us to exist at a higher level, beyond just ourselves as individuals, and instead as a part of the univerze if that makes sense. Like the world tour scene.
Going to church is a very spiritual experience for me too. Not as in a "'I'm going to go in and kneel", but as in I'm going to sit with myself, my doubts, and my problems and set them beside me, not as burden, but as company. Also, the atmosphere is charged with so many people's faith; you can feel a difference between the outside world and the inside church. It's not exactly peace, but it is a stillness, a suspension. That's why, even if I don't go to mass anymore, sometimes I'll go in and say hi to God, and to myself because you're right: this world is a hard place to live in. Until you find that little quiet that helps.
Hope you found a church with people to love you, that hold your questions and your faith.
Ida is one of those films I could never get out of my head. Talk about compassionate filmmaking, it's brilliant. I can't recommend it enough.
Thank you for this video. First Reformed is the most important movie to me of all time. When I first saw it, I personally was going through many of the same existential questions that the movie is asking: How do I find hope in a world so full of despair? What difference can I, just one person, make when the problems in the world seem so overwhelming? Should I bring life into a world that at times does not appear to have much hope?
In that final shot of First Reformed, I know that Rev Toller has found his hope. The light in the room brightens, the camera becomes untethered dancing in circles, and he becomes overwhelmed by an ecstasy of love and hope. Even if for just a split second before the cut to black, he is happy in that moment. Just the most beautiful and touching final shot of all time. While I’ll likely never be able to fully come to terms with the existential questions in my life, First Reformed helped to give me hope.
I watched this movie yesterday and balled my eyes out. I grew up Presbyterian and then converted to Catholicism. The faults of the church I love bring me such intense pain and feel so at odds with the God and Christians I know. Rev. Toller's struggles hit so close to home
You making this video right as the Criterion Channel is about to drop their Paul Schrader collection is just too perfect!!!
I was diagnosed with Cancer (benign atm, but still) late last year. It would have been easy to run and hide, instead I started rejecting the modern world as it is. I deleted Social Media, started watching less TV and spending more time outdoors than online. It definitely changes your perspective on things. It's easy to focus on the bad and the terrible, but there's still so much beauty left in this world if you just open your eyes.
I just wanted to thank you for this video essay. It's simultaneously insightful and thoroughly thought-provoking, but also emotionally affecting to the point of making me seriously reconsider my life - in a good way. The best analyses breathe new life into art, and this has done so wonderfully. Your work is appreciated.
It's really great to see you aging and developing an even deeper sense of art and your readings and relationship with it. Thanks for the video (and the podcast, which is always great) ❤
I am loving this beginning homage to Ida and First Reformed.
Wonderful work Broey ! This is such a beautiful way to understand why First Reformed still sticks with me almost a full year after having watched it.
And as for the new video style, just amazing! I love that you're doing more complex sequences and can't wait to see more
I adore this new direction in your video essay. Whether you continue to do anything like it or not, it's great to see you stretching your work and placing yourself in it (literally, of course, but more importantly your self-reflection). That takes courage, and you did it well.
I've recently become a grandfather and there are so many emotions that I'm experiencing focused on little Milo. He's a delight and a joy, and he's been born into a time of looming existential threats. I myself have reached a philosophical state of peace in myself after a long time of trying various means of dealing with bipolar at the very time when my physical health is beginning to fail. I'm torn between feeling personally calm, anxiety for my grandson's future, having once again to change what I do because of my health, and the fear of missing out as Milo grows while my own health fails. I'm faced with a choice about how I experience all this. I can't choose how Milo will experience his world, but I can choose how I experience him, and that is with love. That is my transcendence. I don't think it's acceptance so much as a commitment to arrive at a place of love each day despite it all. It's probably my best option.
I haven't watched First Reformed yet, but the plot sounds extremely similar to Ingmar Bergman's "Winter Light," a film which absolutely adopts the Transcendental style. I'd highly recommend it.
first reformed is a total rip off of it
It's basically a straightforward copy of Winter Light and Diary Of A Country Priest
Schrader openly admits that he took the major plot points from Winter Light and Diary of a Country Priest. I find that he did a great job of merging those two plot lines.
@@ZO6Buccaneer did he admit it? It seems he never talks about it despite his movie being a worse version of it
Bergman and Bresson are certainly present in his book about transcendental style. I believe that is not the filmmaker's job to be shouting out his inspirations, he just wears them on his sleeves, they are clear in his work, and we are the one's to make these connections, otherwise it would be like Darren Aranofosky killing the vibe and the momentum of Mother! by explaining the movie to audiences. And above anything else, plot is not equal to the movie itself, otherwise there's no reason to watch movies anymore, just read the classic novels and plays. The narrative, the form, is what distinct a film from the other. In summary, you should watch First Reformed thinking about how Paul Schrader tells the plot of Winter Light, with the style of Bresson, in today's context to today's audience.
only 2 minutes in and I have to say this, I absolutely love your videos, your vocabulary, the themes, even your voice is soothing. + you're a canada girly. thank you
i’ve just stumbled apon this channel while at work and instantly was hooked listening in the background in my airpod while workin in a kitchen i’ve always had a heart for all types of movies and i’m really loving the content keep it up seriously
I'm consistently inspired by the videos you make 💜 The work you do is very appreciated. I love this movie and seeing the connections you make with Schrader's past made me see it in a new light.
I'm sad that I didn't see First Reformed before this video, but I am so, so glad to have watched this. One of my favorite YT videos in over a decade of watching videos on this accused website
Good to see this film being talked about more. I think it only got more powerful with the years. Considering the way the world is going recently, unless you are just plain evil, you are either bound to face similar challenges that this character faces, or you live in denial.
Thank you so much for making a video essay about one of my favorite films. I've only seen First Reform one time about 6 or so years ago, but it has stayed with me. I am always thinking of watching it again, which I definitely will thanks to your video. First Reformed and Lynne Ramsey's You Were Never Really Here are two films from 2017-2018 that have fondly stayed with me. 💖
Ozu and Bresson are two of my favorite directors so it's nice to see the connecting thread. I really need to pick up that book already. Really excellent work here, any day with a Broey Deschanel video is a good one.
I was recommended this channel by the latest Innuendo Studios video and i was delighted to see a wonderful video essay on one of my favorite films!
thank you for making this! one of my favorite films ever even though I can never find the right words to explain why it affected me so much this video helped me understand more. love your work and thank you again for sharing
I had the interesting experience of watching How To Blow Up A Pipeline followed by First Reformed a few weeks later. I liked HTBUAP, but I think it had the same problem of being too manipulative that you described in religious films. Despite having similar themes, First Reformed was so much more affective at making me feel like I *needed* to do something about climate change.
This beautiful essay made me pause and recall a German film I saw a few years ago - the White Ribbon. It portrays a small town in Northern, Protestant Germany, in the early 20th century. The shots making that film so powerful - mundane, disconnected, yet profound - were always so hard to describe, but now I know; it's part of transcendental style.
The movie gives us an insight into everyday life in this small, typical town, where individuals get crushed by big and small cruelties. A series of mysterious murders shake the towns foundations.
What's left is a town, symbol of a country, where may are left without empathy and unable to cope with the repressed cruelness surrounding them. This is the society that will ultimately start two world wars.
Highly, highly recommend. Seriously.
Love seeing a new Broey video pop-up! Always insightful
Thank you for your awesome writing. Once you start contemplating nature after having confronted yourself with the reality of a dying planet, I found that seeing living things be becomes all the more precious and magical. The feeling of nostalgia for another time before the anthropocene is called 'solastalgie' in French, so I guess that is a thing a lot of people are feeling.
I LOVE First Reform but I always have trouble getting my friends to watch it. Thanks for getting at the heart of it so well.
A day without a new Broey video is like a day without sunshine!
Love from Windsor, ON ❤
It also would've been worth bringing up Bergman's Winter Light (1963), of which First Reformed is a sort of updated remake.
what a brilliant video essay. Thank you!
this essay is incredible. your best work yet i think :) thank you maia and team
Another brilliant video, cinematic essays are the way to go. I've had First Reformed on my watchlist for ages need to get round to it.
(Also, cool to see Ben on the edit. From Mr. Sunday to Broey Deschanel, my boy has range)
Whew. I swear. For me personally, after the first time I watched “first reformed”, I was messed up for almost 2 years
I took a class on Schrader’s book right before he put out a new edition of the book/the release of first reformed and it was part of what I submitted my MA on (how first reformed and the canyons fit into his model in different ways). It’s likely in the top 3 most personally impactful cinema studies pieces I’ve ever read. Love that this video exists for no other reason than the book deserves to still be widely discussed, but awesome to see that the video is great otherwise!
LESGOOOO new Broey Deschanel video!!
I'm so glad I found your channel, really unique and so well made
This style of film can be among the most powerful and satisfying film viewing experiences. I believe First Reformed also takes inspiration from HADEWIJCH by Bruno Dumont.
Excellent essay. Thank you.
Paul Schrader might make essentially the same movie over, and over, and over again to explore his own insecurities (Card Counter, First Reformed, Oh Canada, Mishima, Taxi Driver, very similar God's lonely men rebelling). But I will give him transcendental filmmaking. He cooked on that idea.
He has a formula, and when it works it really does work
@@antlerbraum2881 Mishima and First Reformed, among his directorial outings, are easily his most successful, most artfully profound.
@@zackerycooper7602True, and while they (and all the other movies he worked on) are sort of similar on the surface First Reformed and Taxi Driver for example are such widely different movies that are both profound in their own way.
American Gigolo and The Long Goodbye are the same as well. That foul incel audio streams endings from old European films because he very arrogantly didn't think he'd ever get caught 🙄
@@ImnotassweetasIusedtobe Yeah but they’re pretty good little movies
One of my favourite 'recent' films. A modern classic and thank you for such a wonderful essay!
Another UA-camr makes “iconic” the new “epppicccccc” so iconic.
Great video essay! Very interesting I lovef watching it :)
How tf didn't I realize The Card Counter was from this guy too. FR left me floored, a truly brilliant experience.
I want to see Paul Schrader work on a film with Brian Cox!!!
Amazing video! I would love to see one about John Cassavettes because I feel like you could do a great examination of his style
This is such a beautifully shot video!
I only saw First Reformed a week ago and here you are, one of my favourite UA-cam esayists, doing a video on this wonderful movie. Perfect timing.
PS is it just me or is Ethan Hawke getting better and better as he gleefully embraces the wrinkles and grey hair?
A blistering cinematic cry of despair in the face of inevitable doom and existential helplessness. Feels like a spiritual companion piece to TAXI DRIVER, with Reverend Toller serving in place of Travis Bickle. A very sad film about the unabated destruction of our planet, mirrored in the reverend’s own seemingly nonsensical self destruction.
I felt the same way when I saw The Miracle Worker for the first time. It's truly a captivating film based on the true story of the life of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan.
I've also seen another one that I found to be the most interesting. It's a film called Agnes of God, which is based on a play. It is a genuinely fascinating yet unsettling film that deals with the tough conversations of religion vs. science and mysterious cases of murder and violence in the church. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend it!
I love Ida and I'm Polish, so it was easier for me to appreciate it. Might be a good time to rewatch it before I watch Schroeder's film 🙂
Interesting remark from Schrader about "more is more" being a Catholic tendency, as Bresson is one of the most prominent Catholic directors and he certainly believed the "less is more" principle.
First Reformed is the kind of film that makes me excieted about films again. Most of the time it feels like 90% all new culture is just bland and pointless, but there are still good things being made.
Thank you for revitalizing my love of film. Time to get back to work aye?
That Adam Friedland show interview was fantastic
Great essay video on a great subject and film.
Very well.
I saw Ida a year or so back. Definitely worth the watch.
Such a good video - great work!
Waiting patiently for a mention of Winter Light
Mmm
Tarkovsky definitely is spiritual for me - praying through cinema. I experience transcendence in his films-
I don't like everything that Paul has done but he is one of the greatest screenwriters/ filmmakers of all time.
Great video, thank you!
Girl, I love your videos so much. They’re like free anti-depressants.
Ok. You’ve convinced me to watch First Reformed first
Ida was sooooo good
Amazing video of an amazing film. Thank you
Amazing video! I adore first reformed so much…I can’t understand the stress aswell as catharsis that must’ve come in writing such a meticulous piece of art…no movie has ever talked to me so deeply…a movie that understood my hope and despair aswell struggle with faith to its very core…I don’t understand how this movie isn’t talked about more! Please if anyone wants to talk about this movie tell me, it’s my favorite lol
Will God forgive us?
cool video👍🏽
I would say there's definitely a spiritual current in Tarkovsky's films.
I think slow cinema films, especially that of Tarkovsky do have the spritual undercurrent of the Transcendental style.
Great video on one of my favourite films
Thanks, Broey. Let me recommend two films that deal with religious hysteria, THE DEVILS by Ken Russel and the Polish film ST. JOAN OF THE ANGELS. Both treat the outbreak of madness at Loudon, France under Richelieu but the former concentrates on the politics while the latter more on the sexuality of the priests and nuns. Cheers.
Excellent video, poignant analysis my dear
It is wild you didn’t talk about Ingmar Bergman’s “Winter Light” seeing as how “First Reformed” essentially ripped that movie off. The religious themes in “First Reformed” are directly from Bergman.
great video Maia! :)
Bravo. Maia! 100 yrs from now people will examine & theorize about the significance of hurtling Candle facing towards the relentless tablefan, truly the epoch of art.
5:41 "why?" Can you please share what font you used here? Thank you in advance, if possible.
Also interesting to note, is that Bresson also made a movie about the climate crisis called The Devil, Probably back in the 70s. Comparing it to First Reformed, it's almost as if Shrader was rejecting that film's nihilistic ending and changing it to something different and transcendental as you say.
wasn't expecting to see the Bug on this channel
babe wake up broey dropped a new vid
you NEED to see Godland (best movie of that sub genre)
Hell yeah dude
that floating sequence reminded me of tarkovsky
Excellent. But light your candle! It helps kick against the darkness.
yessssss the podcast is coming back!!!
gotdamn, that last quote was haunting.
Is this pronunciation of “spi’RITUAL” a Canadian thing or a Broey thing? I’ve never heard the emphasis put there before, I’m so intrigued
I think it might’ve been to emphasize the pun (foreshadowing??) but not 100% sure
ugh so beautiful! a religious journey if you will!!
IMO, the greatest religious film of them all is Rossellini's The Flowers of St. Francis. (I'm a long time film lover and a director myself)
Beautiful.
I dream of a Broey video on Bresson's Au hasard Balthasard.
Time to get Transcendental on us!
please make a video on jane schoenbrun’s cinematic oeuvre i would love to see your take on their works !!
Having just recently gone on a big Schrader/Ozu/Bresson/Bergman binge (largely fallout from a series of long plane journeys on a carrier with a REMARKABLY good in-flight entertainment selection) this essay has arrived at a very appropriate time for me personally.
It also stood out to me about Schrader's recent work that he has been using this format in ways which contain far more internal tension than his theoretical framework would initially suggest - another example beyond the one in the video would be in Master Gardener, the contrast between the formal contrast of Joel Edgerton's gardening with his neo-nazi past and the description of gardening throughout the film which could just as easily be a description of the fascist maintenance of an idealised communal ethnic arrangement. It makes the criticisms that he remakes the same film over and over fall very flat to me, because he's clearly pushing it in much more versatile and complicated ways.
outstanding exegesis!
The claim that Schrader puts Tarkovsky (not Tartovsky) in the same "non-spiritual" category as Akerman seemed quite odd to me when you first said it. So I looked at Schrader's text and my initial impression is that that is very much an oversimplification of what he's saying. I would have to spend a lot more time reading the whole book to figure out exactly what he's getting at, but surely it's obvious that Tarkovsky's work is deeply spiritual.
Yes, Schrader's theories require some familiarity with his thinking, and then also a somewhat extensive sampling of slow cinema, in order to be able to follow. The video shows Schrader talking at a podium that says "TIFF" on it. From that talk, quote:
"Well, what happened to transcendental style? Well, Gilles Deleuze happened. And then Andrei Tarkovsky happened. And then slow cinema happened. What I didn't realize in 1972 when I was writing Transcendental Style was that what I was calling transcendental style was actually an outgrowth of post-war Neorealism. We can now see that in perspective. It was part of the insight that Deleuze brought to the discussion with his books on Movement Image and Time Image in 1984 and '86."
Transcendental style as Schrader first posited it, was a particular film grammar, and it didn't mean that films in that style necessarily had spiritual subject matter -- Ozu films are middle class domestic and workplace dramas.
More modern slow cinema, which starts with Kiarostami and Akerman (their styles an evolution of neo-realism) is, similarly, a kind of film grammar, at least according to Schrader. Again spiritual subject matter doesn't have to come into play.
Schrader, in his "revisiting transcendental style," is mapping modern slow cinema, and he uses Tarkovsky to provide his map with a scale. People are familiar with approximately how slow the pace of a Tarkovsky film is, and this provides his diagram with its scale.
For Schrader, filmmakers making transcendental style films are narrative filmmakers; they see it as their purpose to tell a discreet story in their film. Other modes of slow cinema filmmaking have priorities besides a purely narrative one. Schrader associates Tarkovsky's pacing with the outer limit of slowness wherein the priority is to make a purely narrative film.
6:20 The amount of time it took me to figure out spuhRITUAL was spiritual.😂 Also if anyone loves Ethan Hawke please go watch the Before trilogy and then lament with me that this man can’t live to act for us forever.
he is kinda underrated compared to his contemporaries.