I found this on the usual critics’ lists and knew it that it starred Ethan Hawke playing a priest. I did not realize that it was directed by Paul Schrader who seems to have been desperately trying for the past several years to revive his career and make money through a succession of awful films. I don’t understand how he convinced Hawke to appear in this one. Indeed while it starts out as a fairly conventional story about a priest wrestling with internal demons, it soon goes off in a dark direction that is not at all convincing.

Reverend Toller runs the historically important First Reformed church which now exists mostly as a tourist attraction. He is also struggling with his own problems including a divorce due to his son dying while serving as a soldier in Iraq and as a result drinks too much while neglecting his own health. One day he is approached by one of the few attendees his church still has, Mary, to speak to her husband Michael. Mary is pregnant but Michael who is a passionate activist for the environment thinks it’s wrong to bring a child into a world that has been ruined by climate change. Meanwhile his church is due to host a reconsecration ceremony for its 250th anniversary with the assistance of Abundant Life, a popular and rich megachurch. Toller is dismayed when one of their most important donors is the owner of a corporation that has been accused of engaging in polluting activities.

With such disparate and weighty themes driving it, this is nothing if not an ambitious film. Shrader takes on among other things the relationship between churches and big business, how churches in the US seem lackadaisical in taking climate change seriously and perhaps even an examination of how depression and religious conviction can lead one to terrorism. There are also shades about the conflict within Christianity between a more left-wing compassionate and spiritual wing and a more right-wing, muscular wing that equates religious devotion with prosperity. Ethan Hawke gamely takes on this complex and controversial role and as usual does a fantastic job at it. He injects gravitas into scenes just from his mere presence and instantly elevates its quality.

Unfortunately nothing else in the film can match up to Hawke’s level of performance, not the script itself and not his co-stars. Amanda Seyfried’s acting as Mary might be okay in most films but feels inadequate next to Hawke’s intensity. Schrader’s attempts to make you feel something for the environment amounts to a PowerPoint-like presentation and ticking off talking points. As for the unhealthy dependence churches have on big business, the film raises the issue but appears to take no stand on the matter either way. The film does not manage to touch the sublime in any way and the one scene in which it attempts to evoke a sense of spiritual transcendence is laughably bad, not to mention seemingly dangerous for a pregnant woman to do. Magical Mystery Tour indeed. It’s very much what a Hollywood writer familiar with drugs imagine’s what a spiritual experience is like. The only part of the film that is convincing is its portrayal of an alcoholic man looking into the abyss. That I think is because I can believe that Shrader knows something about that state of mind but I do not believe that he understands religion or has much personal passion for the environment.

I also greatly dislike the male-centric nature of the story particularly with regards to how it ends, as that is again something we would expect of Schrader. The twist in Toller character is certainly shocking and not anything I would have expected it’s unjustified by what we’ve previously seen of his beliefs and the history of Christianity in the US. The infuriating thing is that this film has enough artistic merit that it deserves to be taken seriously, yet judged by those standards, on every count except Hawke’s performance, it is terrible. This reminds me of the fictional director in Youth who keeps trying to make that one last great film even though he is far past his prime and should really know better.