Or is it? And what kind of deadly are we talking about? Bored to death some will immediately say. And if that is what comes to mind while you watch it, I would totally get it. And not because of anything in particular other than the pace of the movie. How it conducts itself and how the viewer will perceive it. But as always this will be a decision everyone has to make for themselves. Another reviewer calls this a somber masterpiece.

Whether you agree with the assessment or not, the user felt like it while watching it. Paul Schrader is most definitely not someone who'll do a movie that's purely entertaining. And since he has written this too, you can imagine that the guy behind Taxi Driver and Bad Lieutnant is not going to hold back or become mainstream. Does the end justify all means though? Well if you hold onto it until then, you may feel that way or you may feel dissapointed. Just because this is "art" does not mean, you have to like it. But if it floats your boat, you'll be so high, it will feel like heaven ...

A couple of years ago I wrote that I had trouble with Martin Scorsese's SILENCE, a visually beautiful movie about Jesuits in 17th-Century Japan because it was a movie about faith, a subject completely alien to me. I had exactly the opposite problem with the movie I saw with my cousin today, Paul Schrader's First Reformed (2017).

Ethan Hawke is the pastor of a tiny Dutch Reformed church in upstate New York. He has about seven communicants. The only reason his church exists at all is that it is an historically important church, about to celebrate its 250th anniversary, with a major ceremony. Mr. Hawke has major emotional issues. His son was killed Iraq, following a long family tradition of national service. His wife, played by Victoria Hill, divorced him. In the meantime, one of his congregation, pregnant Amanda Seyfritz, asks him to counsel her husband, who wants her to get an abortion. He is convinced that global warming is about to end the world and it would be wrong to bring a child into this world.

I wrote of SILENCE that I have no personal understanding of faith. Neither, apparently, does Schrader, who wrote as well as directed this movie. His take on the subject is that anything that he does not understand is nonsense, and that the motives of people are always base and evil. By the end of the movie I was deeply offended. When my cousin asked me what I thought, I replied: "Well, Mr. Schrader, f**k you too."

It is not simply the absence of anyone to admire in the movie. That is a tiresome feature of far too many modern movies that I note as a major flaw to my enjoyment. It is a major philosophic flaw of many people who, confronted with someone with opinions different from theirs, assume the basest of motivations; Mr. Schrader makes that assumption and makes it the central message of his movie. People are garbage, regardless of what they tell you. It is an argument grown distressingly common in the highest of modern political discourse and I reject it absolutely, and this movie with it.

I asked my cousin what he thought of this movie. He said "Well, a movie should show you something you haven't seen before." I agreed it had, but told him that the next time he wanted to see a movie by Mr. Schrader, he could see it without me.