First Reformed
1997 Directed by Paul Schrader
The theme of obsession doesn't only tread into the passion of the flesh- but of the existential question of faith. A pastor is on a quest to help a man in despair about the environment. But by doing so this quest also becomes a reflection of the pastor's own despair and loss of touch with God after the loss of the pastor's son.
"A Life without despair is a life without Hope." In thinking of these words they prevail upon the idea of hope- hope to overcome obstacles and crisis and those things in life that we can not control. Can religion exist without the despair that leads to the warm blanket of Hope? If we concern ourselves with the everlasting then the present pain becomes a dullness- even a pain that one can embrace and feel vindicated in the mortification of the flesh through self inflicted harm.
Therin lies the core of this tale- of a horror so literally bubbling with Pepto-Bismol and alchohol that it implodes the mind and body. It is the same visual language of Taxi Driver's alka-seltzer in water- of a man's infectious mind conspiracy that propels the user to frenetic action even if hope lingers in the people we surround ourselves in. For the pastor it is the wife of the man that he's failed to help. A soon to be mother named Mary- a not so subtle reminder of Mother Mary and the unborn Christ without sin. This is in contrast to the crumbling Church itself- which has only become a sideshow to the megadonors and corporations that have given to the Church but have polluted the great Mother Earth.
Pestilence not only eats at the pastor's mind, but his body. Each visit brings new spurts of internal decay in stomach cancer. The pastor's whole world is ready to combust- with a constant obsession towards digitized violence that repeats itself in images that become reality. This becomes the paranoid reality of isolation even in an internet connected age.
Even as it was Mary who introduced the pastor to this seed of combustion like the apple with Eve- it is in the embrace of Mary the film chips at the banal reality that has framed much of the picture. This emotional puncture through the starkness reality of everything that has come before pushes a disconnection from logic to the joyous embrace of faith.
This is the release of tension from the rest of the film- which is of a minimalist slow paced style to come to this quick moment of crisis. This faith in the flesh of another form- another person is that cathartic breath of air that the audience really wants to believe in, even if the logical space in the brain rejects it. What you're left with is unsettling in the gut that resounds physically through the body- the cycle of existential crisis. This is the uplift for so much of Schrader's films- Of the isolated male connecting to his otherworldly female counterpart. This divine feminine archetype conjures all remedy- as much a potion for the gut as the coded pink concoction.
The modern world's need for connection- with all of our worldly upheaval. The film wants to compel belief in hope even in hopelessness. For myself how much we accept our own bodily flesh and spirit and reach out to others in spite of the absurd horrors of reality becomes authentic gospel beyond the confines of organized religion.