FIRST REFORMED — CLASSIC FILM PICK

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How refreshing it is to be reminded of the mortal shocks that valid Cinema can deliver. When audiences first saw “Taxi Driver” (written by Paul Schrader) they couldn’t wait to talk about it.

It was an experience they had to get off their chests. Audiences were confused but intuitively informed by “Taxi Driver’s” dire provocation.

Here was a film that captured the fall out of the Viet Nam War in a stark portrayal of a [racist] veteran’s psychological, and existential, crisis in the midst of an American culture shock.

For all of its mis-readings by audiences who also misunderstood Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” or Paul Verhoeven’s “Starship Troopers” (both ingenious filmic satires), “Taxi Driver” remains a cinematic touchstone that refuses to submit to the ravages of time. So too will “First Reformed” stand as a bellwether film for the ages.

Culture shock plays a role here too. As Paul Schrader did with “Taxi Driver,” he transplants God’s lonely man of Thomas Wolf’s indispensable essay into the modern world. However, this time it is not Manhattan’s urban cesspool that ignites the mind and body of our searching protagonist, but rather a perfect storm of globalized political, corporate, and religious corruption that infects Ernst Toller, a war vet (military Chaplin) turned small-town minister.

Missing are any visual trappings and sexy locations that would distract from Schrader’s formally composed character study. Small-town America is the hotbed environment where a toxic chemical dumping ground releases vapors of social unrest and rage. This film’s formal compositions seethe with restrained silence and nostalgic dignity.

Although Schrader retains the voice-over narration approach he effectively utilized in “Taxi Driver,” this time he puts a diary in our protagonist’s hand. Ethan Hawke’s Reverend Ernst Toller (named after the Jewish German left-wing playwright exiled by the Nazis) is the not-so glorified caretaker of the First Reformed Church in a fictitious town in upstate New York. Sick with an internal disease for which he refuses to seek medical care, Toller sets out to keep a handwritten journal that he will “shred and burn” at the end of one year. Empty whiskey bottles pile up in his weekly trash. Ethan Hawke’s performance is exquisitely transparent.   

Having lost his son to the Iraq War that he insisted his boy enlist, against his wife’s wishes, Toller squandered his marriage. His salvation came from Reverend Joel Jeffers (Cedric Kyles), the leader of a large institutional church that guards its corporate funding with a vengeance. The church will soon celebrate its 250^th anniversary at a “re-consecration” event to be held in the well-preserved “souvenir shop” church that Toller oversees.  

Reverend Toller embraces the challenge of faith brought to him by Mary Mensana (Amanda Seyfried), a pregnant newlywed who has recently moved to the area with her ecological activist husband Michael (Philip Ettinger).

Michael doesn’t believe Mary should give birth to their 20-week old fetus due to the impending dire effects of climate change that will ravage human life in the coming years and decades.

What follows is a concise thesis on how Christian ideology is co-opted by corrupt forces, and how the religion’s “washed in the blood of the lamb” imagery feeds into radicalizing those who are most committed to its precepts.

Far from the “thriller” genre that some are attempting to pigeonhole “First Reformed” into, the film is a transcendent drama built on a rigorous filmic foundation.

There are two sequences of romantic affection in the film. Each one arrives as a dangerous if not outright radical act.

How and why is it that we the audience can be so provoked by something as natural as a kiss when the violence that we see or expect to witness seems more inevitable, if not natural?

As Thomas Wolf pointed out in his essay, Christ’s primary teaching was that “loneliness could be destroyed forever by the life of love.” You don’t have to be religious to see the truth in that, but you should see “First Reformed” a couple of times to understand how Paul Schrader shows you what connects us in the kingdom of heaven that we all possess and share. Is "First Reformed" a perfect film? Yes, yes it is. 

Rated R. 113 mins.

Dramatist and LA GRANDE BOUFFE (THE BIG FEAST) regular Phil Holt returns to the podcast to discuss PAUL SCHRADER'S FIRST REFORMED over a glass of BUNKER'S BROWN ALE. Bon appétit!

PARANORMAN

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Stop-Motion Spooky
Laika Cuts Pixar Down to Size
By Cole Smithey

Fans of Aardman’s handcrafted style of animation will find much to enjoy in this wonderfully stylized stop-motion comedy-horror-thriller about a little boy named Norman who sees dead people, or at least their ghosts.

Co-director/writer Chris Butler (storyboard artist for “Corpse Bride” and “Caroline”) teams up with Sam Fell (director of “Flushed Away”).

The result is a detail-rich kids’ monster movie that strikes a fine balance between comedy, suspense, and goofy horror. You know you’re in good hands in the first minute.

Norman Babcock (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) likes to watch gross-out B-horror movies on television while talking to the ghost of his dead grandmother (voiced by the inimitable Elaine Stritch). The movie opens with a televised grindhouse horror-movie parody — complete with scratched up film stock — that delights Norman. Neon-green goopy brain matter comes with the territory. The film’s zippy production design (courtesy of Laika production house in Oregon) and off-kilter humor is a riot. The clever intro makes you wish they’d turn the short into its own feature-length movie.

Norman’s parents worry about him — dad (Jeff Garlin) more so than mom (Leslie Mann). Everywhere Norman goes in his small New England town of Blithe Hollow, he sees and talks to the ghosts of deceased citizens. Echoes of the 17th century Salem witch trials reverberate. Norman gets bullied at school for his weird behavior, and also due to his unusual appearance that includes hair that sticks straight up in the air. They call him “Ab-Norman.” Funny stuff. A rehearsal for a Halloween school play that Norman is in, gives rise to a scene-stealing instructional line reading from Norman’s teacher (voiced by Alex Borstein).

His uncle’s guffaw-inducing death enables the freshly minted ghost to give Norman his marching orders to eradicate an annual curse by a witch’s ghost that promises to bring on a plague of zombies. Norman’s ability to talk to the dead isn’t such a bad thing after all. Good thing Norman has his chubby pal Neil (Tucker Albrizzi) to come along for the ride. Anna Kendrick wangs it up as Norman’s self-obsessed teen sister Courtney. Painting her toenails and dreaming about the ab muscles on her buff classmate Mitch (Casey Affleck) keep Courtney occupied until. Mitch’s participation in the story as Neil’s older brother holds a not-so-subtle (read adult oriented) character revelation that sends a witty punch line late the story.

“ParaNorman” has its share of jaunty chase sequences to keep kids on the edge of their seats. No matter how many pieces the encroaching zombies break into, their body parts keep on attacking. Expert camera work from cinematographer Tristan Oliver (“Fantastic Mr. Fox”) gives the movie plenty of lively movement. An over-the-top climax explodes into a surreal universe of cosmic horror that borders on science fiction. Visually, the movie is a treat. The story is a little lightweight and muddled, but you shouldn't hold that against it. If you liked “Caroline” (2009), the animation here is even better.

Rated PG. 93 mins.

BLACK SWAN — CLASSIC FILM PICK

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Back In Black
Natalie Portman Soars and Swoons En Pointe
By Cole Smithey

Darren Aronofsky's voyeuristic psychological thriller about an upstart prima ballerina's descent into madness employs the same subjective dancer's-point-of-view that gave "The Red Shoes" its sense of frenetic authenticity. Dario Argento's "Suspiria" (1977) is another obvious influence.

Natalie Portman gives the most dazzling performance of her career as Nina, an entirely believable ballet dancer consumed with proving to her manipulative choreographer that she is capable of possessing the duality of the Swan Queen role in his version of Swan Lake, as both the innocent "White Swan" and the erotically possessed "Black Swan." The ubiquitous Vincent Cassel dominates in his role as New York City Ballet choreographer Thomas Leroy whose proclivity for sleeping with his lead dancers is widely known.

Leroy bullies, neglects, and seduces Nina into expanding mental and physical boundaries set in stone by her neurotic mother Erica (Barbara Hershey). Nina still lives at home with mom in their Manhattan apartment. In this dysfunctional setting, echoes of "Carrie" reverberate along with abstract corporeal elements that tip toward Cronenberg's cinema-of-the-body surrealism. Portman's estimable abilities as a ballet dancer give the film a foundation of disciplined substance that Aronofsky liberally attacks with brushstrokes of subliminal menace.

As is the habit of ballet dancers, Nina is compulsive about her art. At home her mother continually prompts her about her obligations to dance. At her Lincoln Center residence, Nina feels threatened by the other dancers in the corp. Lilly (Mila Kunis) poses the most direct threat to Nina's tenuous grip on the "Black Swan" role that she fights to keep. The lesser trained Lilly is certainly better equipped to play the sexually omnivorous part, but is perhaps too worldly to embody the "White Swan" purity that Nina effortlessly possesses. It comes as a shock when Cassel's Leroy gives Nina a homework assignment to go home and "touch herself" as a backdoor into the mentality of the "Black Swan."

Aronofsky takes the opportunity to detonate the film's most shocking revelation as Nina masturbates on her bed in the relative privacy of her room. The filmmaker captures a shocking nightmare moment of performance anxiety crossed with the intrinsic embarrassment of a rehearsal process that inhabits every molecule of Nina's being. It's an unforgettable scene that marks our unreliable protagonist as the victim of a volatile structure from which there is no escape.

Regardless of how much or how hard she rehearses Nina is dislocated from her body and from the latent power of her erotically charged imagination. Perpetual bloody scratches on her shoulder blade signify an inner demon attempting to claim its latest victim. An impulsive decision to go out clubbing with her rival Lilly on the night before the opening performance, puts Nina in a drugged-out state that allows for a reverie of lesbian attraction. Flashes of "Rosemary's Baby" arise when paranoid Nina is challenged over whether the Sapphic event was real or not. Indeed, the sex scene brims with an exotic sense of vertigo that sticks in the viewer's mind like a mirage of palpable narcotic fantasy.

Leroy instructs Nina that "The only person standing in your way is you." The line serves as an inciting challenge that puts Nina in a private ring with the repressed desires she has funneled into dance all her life. In her determination to embody the Black Swan, Nina becomes lost in a maze of her own mysterious design. More than anything, she wants to martyr herself for her art in a way that will obliterate all notion of any dancer who has come before or after her. Nina has seen the unhappy fate of the prima ballerina she replaces — Winona Ryder as Beth Macintyre. No brand of sex or romance can compete with Nina's secretly-held vision of a dancer whose transformation into her character is a Gothic revelation of Christ-like ascension.

"Black Swan" comes at a troubled economic time in America when culture has been relegated to the same dust bins that once held the shredded bits of legislative truth that protected it. Artistic passion has become an unaffordable luxury. Only those willing to throw themselves entirely on its long rusty sword have any business pursuing such commercially bankrupt froth. To dream of art is to dream of death. But you can't help feeling that Portman's mythological Black Swan represents a Phoenix whose rebirth will be nothing short of magnificent.

Rated R. 108 mins.