My mind works to make sense of my internality, spinning spools of thread and weaving with all of it into some sculpture, made of sense experience, feelings, and the minds logical reactions to them. But to make sense is another kind of destruction, to organize the raw material of the real body and it's history into something for myself, to seek individual understanding, catharsis, meaning. The depths of my sorrow and alienation, rendered as narrative by prayer. to confess to The Other my stream of consciousness. To reach out, trying to touch the world.
At all moments the world is reborn, destroyed and coming again, reshaped. Despite all of our narratives, all of our pain and suffering and struggle, we cannot escape being a part of this. We are in union with everything, seeking reconciliation for our individuality. Reaching to feel this unity, and finding as much separation as we find connection. Hope and Despair, Comfort and Fear, at this reality. Tense, pulling each other back and forth forever inside of us and in our world. The visceral truth of it completely stuffed with so much of both of them, it cannot be reconciled by the mind. And so naturally, we come to faith, but faith in what? Ourselves? The Other? or the Contradiction, the very Tension itself?
I can see the truth that you avert your eyes from, and still I have held my faith. But is there truly relief in faith? or is it another prayer, another hollow narrative for the individual mind to hold while it writhes in it's distance and separation? The eternal and painful human experience carried out entirely on holy ground: Life and Death, the liminal space between floors. Accepted and Outcast, Unified and Individual, Wise and Foolish, Saint and Sinner.
I was literally and figuratively on the edge of my seat, what a film. The performances are incredible and the visuals are perfect and the script, my God! The immense energy of the way all of these elements come together was very overwhelming, this might be the most I've ever physically shook with anticipation from watching a movie. Absolutely astonishing and structurally genius, by the halfway point I felt completely enveloped by Toller's character perspective.
It really can't be understated how much of a hard sell it is getting me on board for a narrative that so directly addresses modern, Very American post-internet political ails. This movie completely disarmed me with how precisely gentle it is able to be while facing that subject. I have never so consistently been so impressed by a films restraint, by the halfway point near every scene filled me with intense fear that the movie would misstep for cheap movie-goer points and it walks that tense line until the very end without a single blunder. and all the while, I found it so thrilling and fun to watch! It is of course full of darkness and often the cinematography is contemplative and brooding but there is a wonderful rhythm to the way it all flows and works together that makes it incredibly Fun to experience and watch. So many genius little moments and lines and insights. It's perfect and it's powerful and I can feel that I will need to sit and grow with it and I am so excited to get to be able to exist with this movie. Genuine Modern Christian Mythological Masterpiece. Lit my brain on fire. I'm still screaming.
(12-31-2025)
First Reformed (Movie Review)