Page - 142 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/01

out this particular theological debate, Schrader leaves the viewer with only a superfluous caricature of it, so that the episode becomes entirely about Toller’s character and not about the theological context to this conflict. This scene, and many like it, renders the film slightly vacuous: at face value, it appears to offer genuine engagement with some urgent theological and political problems; in reality, such issues are merely paid lip service and serve only to contextualise the protagonist’s motivations. Yet beyond such thematic inspiration and narrative impetus, the influence of Bresson extends to the film’s structure and form: like Bresson, Schrader posi- tions his protagonist’s journal at the heart of his storytelling. Interestingly, un- like Bresson, Schrader introduces his protagonist’s journal in a highly affected manner. Whereas the journal in Diary of a Country Priest seems an organic narrative device (and a central inheritance from Georges Bernanos’s novel), the journal in First Reformed is introduced as a spiritual exercise, the writing of which will last for one year, after which it will be destroyed: Toller will write in unbroken prose, forbidding himself from crossing out words and sentences so that, without any space for the oblation of thoughts he regrets or else would su- press, he is forced to confront himself psychologically, without self-indulgence. The effect is prayerful and contemplative; it is spiritual in the truest sense of a bared soul, insofar as it is bared not outwardly but inwardly and becomes the crucible for the central struggle with faith in the film. Perhaps Bresson’s most significant influence on the film, though, is stylistic. In the early 1970s, Schrader devoted a third of his book Transcendental Style in Film1 specifically to the work of Robert Bresson, whom Schrader identified as a filmmaker who embodied transcendental style. As with other forms of tran- scendental art, transcendental style in film is an attempt to contemplate the transcendent and express the concept of the “holy other” through its art. The key elements of this style permeate Bresson’s films and are readily percepti- ble in First Reformed: the long take, where action is spurned in favour of iner- tia; minimalist editing, where the director delays the cut and holds on to shots longer than the subject dictates; austere camerawork, which eschews conven- tional coverage in order to pursue a stillness in the frame that reflects the still- ness and contemplative atmosphere of the film. These techniques are the bare bones of transcendental style as Schrader articulated it in his critical theory and it is not surprising that he seems to have made First Reformed with aspirations of emulating this style, particularly given the subject matter. I would argue, too, that Schrader is largely successful in this aim. The film is contemplative; it with- holds action in order to distance the viewer, while at the same time its focus on the mundane and the everyday details of life draws the viewer into the film in 1 Schrader 2018, first published 1972. 142 | James Lorenz www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1