SPOILER DISCUSSION

1. The levitation scene that happens close to 80 minutes into the movie comes out of nowhere and manages to not only be jaw dropping but completely and entirely relevant to the themes at hand. The scene starts on Ernst fully alone and isolated. He’s framed isolated in a room which only makes up part of the small frame – his alienation is almost palpable. Then he receives a knock on the door from Mary and goes to respond. Like most of the movie, the camera does not move to follow him. Instead, we’re left with no one on the screen. However, we can still hear Mary and Ernst talking and are forced to imagine it. We anticipate their return to the screen and what’s going to happen. The resulting levitation is thus made that much more powerful. As they start to float they’re treated to idyllic visions of a harmonious Earth, but as soon as Ernst looks away from her face the heavenly turns hellish and he’s subjected to visions of a dying planet.

Obviously the levitation is from Tarkovsky and is done to create that sense that the divine is present in the movie along with emphasizing the love literally lifting the couple up against gravity. The dedication to realism makes the payoff all the more magical because it’s logic can never be anticipated. However, the leadup to the scene also feels like a callback to one of the most famous scenes of Taxi Driver – the moment where Travis tries to call Betsy after their less than successful date.

He dials her number and as he tries to communicate with her, the camera tracks to the right and shows a completely empty hallway. It’s a beautiful demonstration of not only Travis’s loneliness but also his inability to communicate with others. His conversation and loss of Betsy’s company isn’t even shown on the screen. All we see is the empty streets. The call ends and he leaves to the empty section of the screen – showcasing to us that the only person in his world is he himself.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Comparing the scenes against each other reveals the genius behind Schrader’s evolution. Both scenes show the protagonists isolated. Both protagonists engage in communication with their romantic interests. In Ernst and Mary’s case, their conversation is cognizable (both of them can be heard). In Travis and Betsy’s case only the former’s voice can be heard. For the former couple, their conversation eventually enters the screen for the audience to see again. For the latter couple, their conversation never had any substance to begin with and is stuck in a zone of emptiness where all we see is an empty street. The former couple starts to levitate due to their connection while the latter couple fails to create a connection leaving the protagonist completely alone to his thoughts. However, Schrader doesn’t want us to forget Ernst is just a more mature Travis, so he shows us what happens when Travis is lost in his own thoughts. The moment the reverend looks away from Mary and stays in his own thoughts, he sees a ruined Earth – a vision of an apocalyptic cesspool. No matter how mature he is, there’s still some Bickle left in Toller.

Furthermore, the moment demonstrates the way hope and despair exist as opposites on a coin. Both are intense spiritual feelings that can completely change ones outlook. By showing Ernst’s ability to switch between the two visions and connecting Mary even more to the idea of hope, the movie continues to develop its themes and set up for the ambiguous ending.

2. I love this moment after Mary asks Ernst to pray with her for the first time. His voiceover reveals his discomfort at the situation. He just goes through the motions.

The shot of the moment however, reveals something else. The two bodies are almost entirely cast in shadows as their silhouette is outlined against the sunlight coming in from the shades. It’s a good foreshadowing of their future unification.

3. In Winter Light, after Karin (the character Mary is based off of) learns her husband (the character Michael is based off of) has die , she basically stops having a purpose in the story. However, here, Mary is the second most important character after Ernst and represents a love interest representing hope. Her husband is the embodiment of despair, ergo his early death. She is hope. Her role as the soon-to-be mother connects her to bringing a new radiance. She is only able to connect to Ernst because of her husband’s condition – the initial conversation happens because of his despair and their love blossoms post his death due to their increased time with each other. A hope born from despair.

She serves as a counterpoint to Esther (Victoria Hill), who represents a love interest of despair. She reminds him of his past failures and misgivings. She is the opposite of Mary who is hopeful and points to the future. Just like counterpart in Winter Light, Ernst has no interest in her, but his rejection and subsequent attachment of Mary can then be tied back to the larger themes of hope and despair. It’s another example of just how well Schrader is able to adopt other ideas and use them for his own purposes.

4. Another great callback to Taxi Driver happens in the latter portion of the movie when Ernst decides to mix some Pepto-Bismol into his whiskey to help him continue drinking in spite of his stomach problems. This is in reference to Travis putting an effervescent tablet into a cup of water, staring at the fizzing mixture, and then zoning out.

• 

• 

• 

In Travis’s case the frothing concoction is emblematic of the frustrations bubbling up within himself and the way they disrupt the normalcy of the things around him. In Ernst’s case the mixture itself is both a poison and a medicine – despair and hope incarnated in a cup – Ernst both poisons and heals himself – a contradiction like he mentioned earlier. This is then taken even further when Ernst pours out his cup later to fill it with liquid drainer – a full poison – a complete resignation to a full despair. In any case, the liquid is representative of its respective “lonely man”.

5.

• 

• 

• 

• 

In Diary of a Country Priest, the priest’s diet consists of just wine and bread because of the religious significance of the food. When we start off First Reformed, we see Ernst eating the same thing. He’s stuck on a similar path. However, closer to the end of the movie when he’s decided on his more drastic course of action, we get a great scene of him enjoying tuna and talking about the “good things in life”. It’s supposed to be indicative of the way he’s changed and is now not abusing his body, but then the next shot reveals that the reason he’s eating at the location he’s at is because Ed Balq happens to be in the same place. Thus the good dietary change is accompanied by a case of stalking – hope and despair. The question then becomes whether Ernst is now enjoying food because he knows he’s going to die or because he’s changed his orientation towards what restrictions he has to make.

6. The way the movie builds up Ernst’s “three” sons in parallel to each other is genius and the heart of the movie that lets all the different story ideas bleed into one another. We start off hearing about Ernst’s deceased son – a son he sent into an unjust war as per his own words. The death of this son destroyed his family life and made him turn further towards God.

Then Ernst takes on Michael as an almost surrogate son. Their conversation feels like one a father and son would have. Ernst is desperate to guide this son on the right path and help him, going so far as to cover up his eco-terrorist out fittings. Then his second “son” dies to suicide and the desperation sets in.

Mary’s unborn child is the only “son” remaining to Ernst. He’s lost one son to war. He’s lost another to a crisis in faith. He can’t afford to lose the last one to the environment. Read in this way his radicalization is his desperation as a father to protect. A eco-terror attack on the even of a Church’s consecration in an attempt at both serving God and saving his “son” is the poetic amalgamation of everything Ernst has been through up till now. This is also why he immediately drops everything once he realizes that his plan will end up killing Mary and her unborn child. There’s no point trying to protect what you’ll end up killing.

7. The ending to First Reformed is what makes the movie a genuine masterpiece. It gives the choice fully to the audience to determine what has actually happened. However, that choice is not arbitrary. It’s something that the movie constantly forces you to develop as it presents you with different events. The more you see hope in the story, the more likely you are to see the ending as a miracle. The more you see despair in the story , the more likely you are to see the ending as a hallucination.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The way the sequencing is done is what makes the illusion so poignant. As we cut from Ernst back to various characters in the church, we hear Esther start to sing “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”. No matter where we cut to – Ernst’s location or the church proper- her singing is a constant in the background. This is important because the movie has had no non-diegetic music up to this point. The only non-diegetic source of noise has been the instances of the low droning tracks. As a result, the assumption we have is the singing is grounded in the real world. Given that the song continues till the end of the movie, up to and past Mary’s arrival in the room, it feels fair to say that what is happening is real. Even if the scene seems miraculous, the earlier levitation scene literally confirmed that cinematic miracles can happen and can break our expectations so the logic of the final scene wouldn’t be unjustified.

However, the song also abruptly ends in the middle of a word as Mary and Ernst start to kiss. The camera turns around them before immediately turning to black. It’s sudden, jarring, and immediately feels like a break with the song that came before. The cut implies that the moment was cut short abruptly which would imply that Ernst actually ended up drinking the cup of drainer and has finally died as the sound cuts out, the encounter with Mary just being a hallucination of a dying man. This theory also gets more credible when you realize the door to Ernst’s location was locked and that Mary would have no idea where he was. Schrader demonstrated as much when he showed us Joel’s (Cedric Kyles) desperate attempts at finding Ernst for the ceremony.

So you have an ending that’s based on Mary actually finding Ernst and rescuing him for a future together. You have an ending based on the idea that everything that happens in the last few minutes is just in Ethan’s head. Both theories have points in favor and points against them and neither can be definitely proven. An ending of hope and an ending of despair.