stood for traditional Christian
principals. Even the most cold-
hearted fan of Norwegian Black
Metal couldn’t burn this church
down. If you’ve seen Schrader’s
maligned The Canyons, with its
montages of decrepit, crumbling
cinemas, you know he cares
about the importance of tem-
ples, both secular and sacred.
In contrast to the diminutive but
dignified First Reformed is its
sister church, Abundant Love, a
modern mega-church that seats
5,000 parishioners and courts
local businesses with anarcho-
capitalistic working practices
that J.C. himself might frown
upon. Toller lives and works in
the shadow of Abundant Love,
his little church derogatorily re-
ferred to as a ‘souvenir shop’
in comparison. First Reformed
has a mere handful of regular
attendees, but its numbers in-
crease when a young couple,
Mary (Amanda Seyfried) and Mi-
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 46
chael (Philip Ettinger), move into
town. The pregnant Mary asks
Toller if he might speak with Mi-
chael, an environmental activist
who believes a child shouldn’t
be brought into a world on the
verge of extinction. Listening
to Michael speak passionately
about his fears for the future of
the planet, Toller finds himself
reinvigorated, and adopts the
environmentalist cause himself,
making an enemy of Abundant
Love and its financiers, and be-
coming increasingly unstable
and fundamentalist in his grow-
ing belief that a violent course of
action must be taken.
First Reformed is a spiritual se-
quel to Taxi Driver, and I’m sorry
if that sounds like an uninten-
tional pun. Like Travis Bickle,
Toller is a military veteran whose
self-isolation from the world and
judgmental standards set him on
a path to what he believes will
be cathartic violence. There are
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