After making movies starring Lindsay Lohan and Nicolas Cage, writer-director Paul Schrader (Affliction) has finally made something worthwhile again. Ethan Hawke (Before Midnight) plays Toller, a former military pastor now working at the eponymous small, but historic church after suffering a personal tragedy. His life centers around his work and the film opens with him embarking on a new experiment. He will write in a journal every day for a year, then burn the journal at the end. Toller is quickly established as a man suffering from unresolved emotional issues and his life becomes more complicated when Mary (Amanda Seyfried; Mean Girls), a patron, asks him to speak to her husband who has become distant and unhappy.

Schrader imbues the film’s severe tone into its visuals. Toller’s home is meager at best with minimum, unadorned furniture and no luxuries to speak of. The film is lit primarily by natural sources, presented in a 4:3 frame, and the action is set against an empty New England winter. These formal elements only serve to highlight the austere approach and Toller’s almost ascetic lifestyle.

For a small film with only a 105-minute runtime, Schrader manages to pack in several heavy themes. His topics range from depression to ecological preservation to capitalism in religion and, miraculously, the film never feels jumbled or didactic. Each of these themes is deeply intertwined with the others. They become natural discoveries as Toller descends further into the film’s central emotion: despair.

You could call Toller’s problems a crisis of faith – as ironic as that may be. The film is filled with similar ironies. Toller counsels Mary husband despite the fact that he too is depressed. It’s the blind leading the blind and rather than alleviate her husband’s troubles, Toller finds himself absorbing his anxieties. He develops a protective relationship with Mary but continues in a vicious cycle of depression as the voiceover readings of his diary entries begin to sound like suicide notes from a tortured soul.

The modest life of Hawke’s character comes into sharp contrast against his boss, Pastor Jeffers, who manages the larger megachurch that owns First Reformed. He dresses sharply, has a gregarious personality, and doesn’t shy away from the financial realities of supporting a large congregation. As he accepts large donations from a chemicals company known for its environmental pollution, Toller becomes increasingly conflicted about his own duties as a man of God.

This is a film about the effects of living in a cold, unjust world. One with no answers and complicated morals. Toller’s attempt at a near-monastic way of life offers him no reprieve. His attempts to remain pure and true to what he believes is the will of God only leave him broken while those willing to compromise succeed. Schrader’s goal is not to depress or condemn, but rather to illuminate the hypocrisies we live in and the compromises we make to survive. In the film’s too-abrupt conclusion, he offers a possible coping method in this nihilistic world, yet even this is not a cure. First Reformed explores the misery that comes with being oversensitized to the world’s problems and the depths of dejection it may cause.

4/5 stars.