Ethan Hawke has a new movie that touches on a pastor who is struggling with his faith. "First Reformed" comes from writer and director Paul Schrader and also stars Amanda Seyfried as the woman who confides in the pastor that triggers him to question his loyalty to the church.
Father Ernst Toller (Hawke), who served as a former military chaplain before becoming a minister, is still grieving and feeling the guilt over the death of his son in the war. He gets by with his work in the church and his daily routine, but the vulnerable Toller has been having doubts about whom he serves.
Then came a church member (Seyfried) who, according to Hollywood Reporter, seeks the pastor's help and counsel about her husband. Through her, Toller learns of the church's unethical activities that tie to the woman's husband's radical environmentalist views.
Toller serves a Dutch Reform church in New York. Since its establishment over 200 years ago, however, the congregation is slowly losing members to a neighboring church with state-of-the-art facilities.
"Can God forgive us for what we've done to this world?" Hawke's character asks in the trailer.
"First Reformed" is not the first spiritual-themed film that Schrader wrote. He also did the screenplay for the controversial 1988 movie "The Last Temptation of Christ," which Schrader considers more of a psychological film than a spiritual movie. Schrader also told Den of Geek that writing Hawke's character in "First Reformed" challenged him because viewers might immediately relate Toller to megachurch pastors like Joel Osteen and Pat Robertson.
"I was raised in the church. I'm a product of the Christian Reform Church in Western Michigan, Grand Rapids," Schrader said when asked about what pulled him to do the film about a conflicted pastor. "I never thought that I would make a spiritual film," he added, saying that it was time to have this story after doing projects with themes like empathy, sexuality and violence.
"First Reformed" was previewed at the Venice Film Festival in 2017 and the SXSW this March. The movie opens in U.S. theaters on May 18.
