The character:	Ernst Toller
The actor:	Ethan Hawke
The movie:	First Reformed (2017)

In 2019, Joker came out and quickly won the title of “most obviously plagiaristic movie of the decade.” Who can forget the flood of reviews of the film which pointed out that it was clearly borrowing from The King of Comedy, as if anyone who reads movie reviews couldn’t figure that out for themselves? For this, First Reformed should be thankful, because it’s really the most plagiaristic movie of the decade, and it’s not close. Paul Schrader, who has attempted to graft the ending from Pickpocket onto multiple pictures, went whole hog here. Winter Light is replicated almost slavishly. The Sacrifice has its moment of levitation. I enjoyed this movie a great deal when it came out, but even Paul Schrader would have to admit that he’s borrowing not just looks but his own feelings from Bresson and Bergman and Tarkovsky.

It’s Ethan Hawke’s movie when it really works, and Ernst Toller is, when surrounding him, human. He’s neither literary nor cinematic, but he has the recognizable signs of a man who is going through a midlife crisis and no real means to satiate the desires that come with them. The cloth is a wall that bars him from things as petty as sports cars or sports betting. The feel of the cloth is what keeps him from running roughshod over the Seventh Commandment. All that’s left to him is death, and to his credit, what death means is not limited to him but to God’s creation itself. The impotence of middle age is synonymous with the impotence of concerned people all over the world in First Reformed. Just as those creeping up to their fiftieth year cannot change the past or slow down time, neither can those individuals who fear climate change really do anything to change it or stop it. The work of societies and nations must do that work, and individuals can only do the smallest masonry in building it. When one is convinced that God has made and ordained such a world, as Toller believes, then the stakes are even higher. Extinction is one thing, but such willing blasphemy is another.

What sets Toller up as heroic, and what leaves the movie feeling so unsatisfying, is that he never really rules out any of the options that lie before him. In terrible times, one of the bravest things an individual can do is to pour, and receive, hope in another person. This is the path he could go down with Mary. In terrible times, one of the bravest things an individual can do is the path of self-immolation; Aaron Bushnell testifies from beyond the grave. Then there is the path of simple suicide, which he also lays out before himself. I don’t know that I consider it brave, but heaven knows it’s decisive. What we’ve learned in the past several years since First Reformed was released is that there are more possibilities than “total catastrophe” for climate change than we credited back then. There are solutions and technologies now which have improved in less than a decade, enough that we might hope that there is a real chance for change if a certain nation could pull its head out of its oily, coal-black buttocks. It’s not over for Ernst Toller at the end of First Reformed. I hope it’s that way for us.