Perhaps more than a few Christians were heartened as much by Schrader’s path to success as by the early films to which he contributed. Part of Schrader’s legend was his strict Calvinist upbringing—it is said that his parents did not allow him to watch movies until he was 18. A graduate of Calvin College, his success provided hope that artists and scholars could escape the Christian bubble and be taken seriously in their own right rather than only as part of the chorus in the newly developing “Christian” art subculture.

I have been waiting most of my adult life for Paul Schrader to direct a great film.

In 1972, at the age of 26, Schrader penned a small, academic tome about the films of Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Yasujirō Ozu called Transcendental Style in Film. Two years later, he shared a screenplay credit with Robert Towne on Sydney Pollack’s The Yakuza. His next writing credit was for the film that laid one of the cornerstones of Martin Scorsese’s considerable legacy: Taxi Driver. It seemed then only a matter of time before Schrader emerged from the shadows of his peers in the “Movie Brat” generation, destined to be as successful filming his own scripts as he was in writing them for others.

Perhaps more than a few Christians were heartened as much by Schrader’s path to success as by the early films to which he contributed. Part of Schrader’s legend was his strict Calvinist upbringing—it is said that his parents did not allow him to watch movies until he was 18. A graduate of Calvin College, his success provided hope that artists and scholars could escape the Christian bubble and be taken seriously in their own right rather than only as part of the chorus in the newly developing “Christian” art subculture.

Schrader’s early films—Hardcore, American Gigolo, and Cat People—were not bad, but they had a seedy, overwrought style and tone that unquestionably translated better to the screen for Scorsese than they did for his scribe. By the time the pair teamed up on a disastrous adaptation of the controversial Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese’s reputation was strong enough to withstand that film’s commercial failure. But while Schrader continued to write and direct, his films (excepting perhaps Affliction) were increasingly met with shrugs rather than cheers. He was fired from Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist and replaced with the director of Die Hard 2 and Cutthroat Island. The Canyons, a bad noir film, is pretty much what you would expect from a Bret Easton Ellis script starring Lindsay Lohan, getting most of its play sandwiched in between Real Sex 17and Red Shoe Diaries on whatever cable channel needs late-night filler programming.

After that, I pretty much gave up on Schrader.

So when I say First Reformed is the Schrader film I had stopped waiting for, stopped even hoping for, it’s not just pull-quote baiting. For anyone who longs for stylistically informed, spiritually serious films for and about religious people, First Reformed is a forgotten wish finally come true.

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