It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

You believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to The Next Picture Show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and the way it shaved our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Keith Phipps here with Genevieve Koski and Scott Tobias. Tasha Robinson is AWOL, possibly sabotaging a superfund site. We're not sure. On the first half of this episode, we discussed Martin Scorsese's taxi driver, a portrait of alienation set against the backdrop of 70s, New York. In this episode, we're looking at First Reformed, the latest directorial effort from taxi driver screenwriter Paul Schrader. This is Schrader's 20th film as director. He's had his ups and downs behind the camera, but the buzz that his latest was one of his best, if not the best film he's ever directed, began with the first screenings of first-reformed. For me, at least, and we'll get to everyone else's reaction shortly, it very much lived up to that buzz. Here Schrader draws on his past work, including taxi driver, but also his earliest and deepest influences. In 1972, Schrader published transcendental style in film Film, Ozu, Brassan, Dreyer,

exploring the commonalities he found in those directors, particularly their use of still compositions

and reserved editing to prompt viewers into new ways of looking at movies.

He recently published a new edition of that book, but First Reformed itself serves as a kind of model

of that style, with some key and meaningful disruptions.

It tells the story of an increasingly disillusioned pastor, played by Ethan Hawke, who heads a sparsely attended but historically important New England church, and who feels compelled to take drastic action to act against the pieces of the environment. Amanda Seyfried co-stars as Mary, the wife of a troubled environmental activist, Cedric Kiles, better known as Setter the Entertainer, plays a pastor of a

much larger church on which Hawks Church, first reformed, is financially dependent. There's a lot to talk about with this movie, including its influences. We could easily have paired First Reformed with several other movies that Schrader has freely cited in interviews, Crawdryor's Ordet, Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light and Robert Besson's diary of a country priest to which it owes a particular debt.

But it's also an urgent Carl Dreyer's Ordet, Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, and Robert Besant's Diary of a Country Priest

to which it owes a particular debt.

But it's also an urgent film with plenty to talk about apart from its influences.

We'll get into all that after the break.

I've decided to keep a journal to set down all my thoughts and the simple events of my day. I've decided to keep a journal to set down all my thoughts and the simple events of my day.

I will keep this diary for one year, and at the end of that time, it will be destroyed.

I encouraged my son to enlist. It was a family tradition.

Six months later, he was dead in Iraq.

I was lost.

My sense, the reading of the Lord.

Praise be God.

So, how are you?

...