Chinese young people returning home during the Spring Festival need to accept the "year taste cross-examination" of the seven aunts and eight aunts who urged marriage and gave birth. The radical environmentalist Michael in "First Reformed Church" resisted reproduction and reproduction more thoroughly than ours. The reason for infertility has risen to the height of the world view of human beings: the world has moved towards a serious, large-scale, irreversible destruction, the social structure cannot withstand diversified crises, and disorder will occupy your life in the near future.
Childbirth is punishment. Instead of humiliating life in this world, it is better to kill despair at the source -abortion.
The quiet and depressive dialogue scene at the opening of "First Reformed Church" throws out important propositions that are extremely controversial for both the left and the right in the United States: environmental protection and abortion. The lead actor Pastor Toler, who was drawn to despair, understands the martyrdom of this senior education-phobic person, but the faith of the clergy requires Toller to give hope, even if this hope is vague and fictitious.
The irony is that the hope given by Pastor Toller cleverly bypassed the banner of politics and religion, but from the smallest unit-the self, to tell Michael about the soul chicken soup, and his son was sent to the battlefield by himself. In the final sacrifice, he used his broken family as an example to demonstrate that the trauma of taking a life outweighs the trauma of suffering it into the world.
This not-so-smart explanation is a path often used by Paul Schrader, the screenwriter and director of "First Reformed" in his previous series of men's films, full of desire for redemption, but unable to change the essence. The status quo .
As a descendant of a strict Dutch Calvinist family, Schrader’s sadistic tendencies are obviously stronger than other American counterparts. He wrote or directed works such as "Taxi Driver", "American Gigolo", and "Psychedelic Life". They all show his many dark ideas about existence, focusing on telling the sad and narrow cowardly story of the male protagonist, and ending with a sad and narrow struggle.
Once the artist enters the later years of his career, he is easy to fall into a state of freedom and lack of restraint . "The First Reformed Church" is more thorough than the previous redemption story. It is bound to be better than last year's "Manchester by the Sea" with the same theme and nominated for an Oscar. "Go further, because under the superficial and current worldly despair, there is still the transcendence of religion that needs to be dealt with urgently.
As a loyal Hollywood promoter of Bresson and Bergman, Schrader, a film critic, does not shy away from paying tribute to films such as Diary of a Country Priest, Winter Light, and Sacrifice. The pastor gazes at the abyss of divinity in a journal, and blames the absence of metaphysics/theology. The definition of divinity is constantly being refined, compressed, and induced.
It's just that the more American Schrader has the ambition of an American Don Quixote. He wants to preach in a broader market and bring his views to the masses.
When Toller's stomachache and anti-vomiting water was poured into the whiskey and formed a pink starry sky vortex, it was hard not to remind people of the picture of Travis staring at the fizzing effervescent digestive tablets in the water glass in "Taxi Driver". This is a close-up and pause crystal about the secular mind. It is not about abstinence, pride, and whether the divine God will forgive our pious prayers, but purely a quiet transcendence of the secular world.
In this dimension, Schrader transcends Bresson, who rejects secular and traditional emotions, because the spreading pink liquid is closer to the nature of the movie than the spiritual promotion of conviction defined by faith.
Finally, Schrader transplanted the secular silence about pink to the shore where Toller wandered. The polluted rusty hull and the pink sky at dusk set off each other. Toller said to himself: "I have found another form of prayer. "This kind of prayer does not require believers to know what they are doing. It only requires believers to figure out what they want to do. Environmental protection has become the beginning of politics instead of religion. Toller was attracted by the enthusiasm of environmentalism, and Michael, who committed suicide, was reborn in Toller’s body. , A passionate, politicized belief rather than a belief began to become Toller’s definite cause.
The first-person narration becomes a testimony to Toller’s transcendental struggle with religion. We trust the soothing voice of the narrator, but it is also easy to be deceived by his seemingly reliable self-justification.
"The First Reformed Church" inherited the path of "The Diary of a Country Pastor" to self-analyze God. Christians in the Middle Ages proved their innocence before God through their good conduct, and proved that he was worthy of God to accept him.
However, modern and contemporary historical experience has made believers feel that the road of autonomy is a dead end. Therefore, the diary in "Diary of a Country Pastor" and "First Reformed Church" is a doctrine system of self-analysis that should not be based on understanding beliefs, but should be based on understanding one's inability to understand beliefs.
But in essence, the believer in Bresson's films is after all a person who lives on some special needs and does not respond rationally to the dangers of the world.
At the end of "Pickpocket", the affectionate kiss between Michel and Jeanne is no longer important to the audience. The important thing is whether the audience is willing to worship this behavior. Whether the character is dead, free or being During the imprisonment, Bresson put forward a coherent and reversible belief with an attitude of transcending himself or even transcending.
In the ending of "First Reformed", the kiss shot under the 360-degree rotating lens is more forceful, but it does not bring a transcendent impact like "Pickpocket". The big reason is that Tolle's 3 times in the last 15 minutes change.
Believing in radical environmentalism but still skipping despair Believing in eternal Mary turned the proud to desperate Toller from a world-weary clergyman to an eco-terrorist, then a thorny religious martyr, and finally a short-lived emotion Compromiser.
In fact, Mary did not make any substantive action images. In essence, each trigger of Mary is more like a contingency transformed into inevitability. Schrader, who is familiar with the Bible,’s favorite believer is Paul. Paul, who was originally going to Damascus to murder Christians, was enlightened to become the most devout disciple of Jesus because of the enlightenment of Jesus.
Paul’s transformation stems from Jesus’ initiation and self-transformation. It is an active salvation in the presence of grace, while Toller’s salvation is a modern grace. It is not a dilemma of action, but a dilemma of decision. No miracle will do anything. You point to the mediocre or cruel traps in modern society. Jesus is still not there. Mary can only provide a complicated and vague outline of grace . Everything needs Toller to connect with God's feelings through his clumsy prayers.
The final embrace of Toller and Mary is not a pure and effective miracle induction, but more like a beneficial wandering on the road to Toller's salvation.
It is undoubtedly ugly and dangerous to abandon the care and help of a female colleague of Abundant Life Club, and even to insult her face to face. Schrader uses two completely different courtship effects not to belittle the two women, from the worldly emotions. Essentially, they are equivalent, but Mary, who represents contemporary liberal theology, can inspire Toller’s belief in desire for forgiveness of sins more than a woman who represents contemporary cheap grace.
Schrader told the audience with a quiet ending that even the music stopped abruptly after the kiss, that despair may still continue, but accepting the incredible events in mediocre reality still largely depends on faith.
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