With "Taxi Driver", Paul Schrader made a movie that was clearly inspired by Bresson's "Diary of a Country Priest". Both films were about increasingly isolated men who kept journals documenting their mental (and, with "Priest", physical) disintegration.
"First Reformed" is almost like a remake of the latter, with unnecessary nods to the former. It's also about a seriously ill clergyman who keeps a journal, which is read to us in voiceover. This one is tormented by the death of his son, who died in Iraq, and is approached by a young married man who is convinced we are going to lose the world to climate change.
The movie becomes more incoherent as it goes on, when the reverend becomes less like the country priest than the New York taxi driver. We know he is coming apart physically, and has some inner demons. But his actions at the end seem crazier than he is.
I just found this last act too hard to believe, and too surprising. But it was a good movie up until that.
"First Reformed" is almost like a remake of the latter, with unnecessary nods to the former. It's also about a seriously ill clergyman who keeps a journal, which is read to us in voiceover. This one is tormented by the death of his son, who died in Iraq, and is approached by a young married man who is convinced we are going to lose the world to climate change.
The movie becomes more incoherent as it goes on, when the reverend becomes less like the country priest than the New York taxi driver. We know he is coming apart physically, and has some inner demons. But his actions at the end seem crazier than he is.
I just found this last act too hard to believe, and too surprising. But it was a good movie up until that.