"First Reformed": A film about a pastor who couldn't answer when asked, "Is it okay to bring a child into this world?" [Contains Spoilers]

I do not believe in religion.

So, I didn't intend to watch this film as a "film about faith." It's a story about a pastor who can no longer pray to God. There is almost no music. The camera doesn't move. Honestly, for the first 30 minutes, I wanted to look at my smartphone.

But at a certain moment, I realized that this film is not a "story about faith."

When someone who believed in something loses what they believe in, how do they keep on living?

It's the same whether it's your job, your relationships, or your conviction in your own talent. The moment you realize that the true nature of what you thought was "the one" is different from what you imagined probably happens to everyone. It happened to me, too.

Synopsis (No Spoilers)

Ernst Toller is a pastor at a small, historic church in New York State. He lost his son in the war, divorced his wife, and spends his days with a body ravaged by alcohol. One day, he is asked by Mary, a young pregnant woman who attends his church, to meet with her husband, Michael, an environmental activist. By touching upon Michael's question—"Is it okay to bring a child into this world?"—the despair that Toller had sealed away within himself begins to awaken.

A little bit about my story

In my mid-20s, there was a time when I bet everything on my work. I thought this was my true calling. I was convinced that I would live my life on this path. I believed that my daily work had meaning and that there was a future to be rewarded after my efforts. I believed that.

It didn't take a major incident for that to collapse. It wasn't that I had a huge failure or was betrayed. It was just that one day, I suddenly realized. The true nature of what I believed in was different from what I had imagined. That was all.

But even though it was "just that," the colors of the world changed.

I stopped knowing why I woke up in the morning. I knew what I had to do. If I did it, it would be finished. But the "why I do it" had vanished. My hands moved to complete tasks, but my heart was spinning in neutral. I couldn't find a reason to work hard. I couldn't find a reason not to work hard, either. The meaning had simply disappeared.

What I did back then was write.

I didn't write it on social media. It was scribbling in my smartphone's memo app, not intended for anyone to see. I tried to put into words what I was feeling at the time. I couldn't write well. As I tried to scoop up my emotions, the words spilled out. But I wrote. For days.

Even when I read it back later, I hadn't written anything of great importance. But if I hadn't had that time, I probably wouldn't be who I am today.

When I watched this film, I remembered that.

A film that is too quiet

This film is too quiet.

There is almost no music. The camera barely moves. The characters' voices are quiet. The colors on the screen are restrained, the space is desolate, and time slowly but surely corners Toller.

When I watched it for the first time, to be honest, the first 30 minutes were painful. Nothing happens. Nothing moves. Because there is no background music, I even felt like I could hear the sound of my own breathing.

But at some moment, you realize. This silence itself is Toller's inner world.

The world of a man who can no longer hear the voice of God is this quiet. Time that should have once been filled with something is now buried in empty silence. Because the film doesn't provide a rhythm, the audience ends up living Toller's time exactly as it is. If you feel bored, it is the same boredom that Toller feels every day.

Director Paul Schrader is the man who wrote the screenplay for "Taxi Driver" over 40 years ago. Young Travis Bickle was filled with rage and picked up a gun. Old Toller sinks into despair and writes a diary. Young rage and old despair. Two men who existed within the same screenwriter are having a dialogue across 40 years of time.

If "Taxi Driver" is a "film of rage," then "First Reformed" is a "film that can no longer be angry." A person who has even exhausted their anger still tries to reach out for something. This film does not make clear what that "something" is until the very end. I believe that is the integrity of this film.

"Is it okay to bring a child into this world?"

The film begins to move during the interview scene with the environmental activist Michael.

"Look at the climate change data. In 30 years, this Earth will be uninhabitable. Is it morally right to bring a child into such a world?"

This line was spoken in a 2017 film. But when watched in the 2020s, its sharpness is something else entirely.

In 2024, the number of births in Japan fell below 700,000 for the first time, to about 690,000. South Korea's total fertility rate hit a world-record low of 0.72 in 2023. The term "antinatalism" has become common on social media, and the "choice not to have children" has come to be discussed seriously as a philosophy. Pandemics, war, climate change, employment anxiety due to AI— "Is it okay to bring a child into this world?" is no longer the line of a radical activist. It has become a question that our generation quietly carries in our daily lives.

When we heard this line in 2017, many people probably took it as "the words of an extreme character in a movie." But it's different now. When you hear a friend announce their marriage, don't you find yourself thinking, "Congratulations," while simultaneously thinking, "It's amazing that they have the resolve to have children in this era"? Or, when you think about having children yourself, is there something that catches in your mind?

And what is important here is that Toller himself is a person who "sent a child into this world and lost him." He sent his son to war. His son died. The question, "Is it okay to bring a child into this world?" is not a hypothetical for Toller. He is already living the worst-case scenario of that answer.

That is why, even when he tries to answer as a pastor that "there is hope," the words stop in his throat. What happens when a person whose job is to "speak of hope" can no longer believe in hope? That is the starting point of this film. Moreover, he is a man who lost his son as a result of believing in hope.

By touching the despair of others, he is reminded of his own despair. The professional risks faced by counselors, doctors, teachers, and clergy are condensed here. People whose job it is to listen to others have no choice but to process the suffering of others through their own filters. When a crack appears in that filter, the pain of others flows in all at once.

The question Michael asks, "Is it okay to have children?" is, when pushed to its limit, a broader question.

"Is it okay to believe in anything in this world?"

Is it okay to love beautiful things? Is it okay to have expectations for the future? Knowing that the world is this broken, is betting on something anyway an act of courage, or ignorance? This film depicts that question as the story of a pastor. But the one being questioned is us.

"Writing is a form of prayer"

At the beginning of the film, Toller starts keeping a diary. Promising himself, "I will write for only one year."

"Writing is a form of prayer."

I believe this single sentence is the key to this film.

Toller can no longer pray. Even when he tries to speak to God, the words won't come. He has no certainty that his voice is being heard. So, he writes. Instead of praying.

But when you think about it, a diary and a prayer are fundamentally different. A prayer has a 'recipient.' There is a God. A prayer is valid because there is an entity listening. A diary, on the other hand, has no recipient. Only you read it.

A prayer without a recipient. That is what a diary is.

Yet Toller does not stop writing. Why?

Because writing is the act of giving form to the chaos within oneself. The moment you put emotions into words, they exist outside of you. The pain that was swirling in your chest becomes fixed as text. Even if you cannot fully understand it, you can confirm that 'it is here.'

Perhaps that is the essence of prayer. The very act of trying to put into words the things within you that have no words is prayer—and for someone who has lost their faith, a diary is their final prayer.

I think that is the same thing I was scribbling into my smartphone's memo app during those nights in my twenties. It wasn't a prayer, but it was an act to confirm that 'I am still here.' The moment I put it into words, it proved that I was still a human being who could feel. It sounds strange, but the very fact that I could write that I was in pain was a salvation in itself.

Toller could no longer pray to God. But he didn't stop writing. There was no recipient. But he wrote. Writing is the only thing keeping Toller alive in place of his lost faith. And this is not limited to faith. For someone who has failed at believing in something, the act of 'continuing to weave one's own words' can itself become a substitute for a broken pillar.

The final scene—the warmth of human hands

Toller wraps barbed wire around his body and prepares to drink drain cleaner. A self-punishing suicide—he is trying to destroy his body from both the inside and the outside. Mary appears. The two embrace. The camera spins around and around. The film abruptly cuts to black and ends.

'People can only be saved by other people'—the feeling of that phrase taking shape in real-time while watching the film.

As time passed, another possibility wouldn't leave my mind. Mary's appearance is, cinematically speaking, far too 'convenient.' Perhaps it was a hallucination that Toller saw in the moment of death after drinking the poison.

But if that were the case—wouldn't that hallucination have been a quiet salvation for Toller, who tried to be a pastor until the very end?

Throughout the film, Toller was unable to pray to God. He had no certainty that his voice was being heard. But he didn't quit being a pastor. He didn't close the church. Even when he could no longer believe, he didn't let go of the 'posture of trying to believe.'

Even if that embrace was a hallucination, it might have been the moment something responded to a person who kept praying until the end. God's voice was never heard in the film. But at the very end, something was returned in the form of human warmth.

I don't think it matters whether it was reality or a hallucination.

What Toller tried to touch at the end was 'human warmth.' That is the only thing that is certain, and I think that is enough.

Not theology, not theory, just wrapping one's arms around someone. Even if you lose your faith, you can still hold hands.

Conclusion

For those tired of believing in something. For those who have forgotten how to pray. For those who cannot find a reason to wake up in the morning. For those whose 'meaning,' which surely existed before, has disappeared before they knew it.

This film does not provide an answer. It does not offer a single correct solution. But that is okay. The very act of sharing the question is already a form of salvation after all.

Even if you can no longer pray, you can still write. You can still hold someone's hand. That alone is enough.

Film Information: First Reformed (2017) / Written and Directed by Paul Schrader / Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried / 113 minutes

💌 Thank you for reading this far.
Have you ever had an experience where something you believed in fell apart? Or perhaps an experience where writing saved you? Please let me know what you felt after watching this film in the comments.

📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yanono_film
🕊 X: https://x.com/yanono_film
📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yanono_film/

#MovieReview #MovieEssay #FilmAnalysis #FirstReformed #EthanHawke #PaulSchrader #ConnectWithMovieLovers #LifeWithMovies #MiniTheater #TaxiDriver #Spoilers #FilmReview #Movies