Last night we had a total departure from our regular programming with a relatively new movie, entitled "First Reformed"(2017), which Grim loaned to me. Since we both like Paul Schrader, who wrote and directed the film, I agreed to give it a go. Ethan Hawke stars as "Reverend Ernst Toller", the minister at a historical Protestant church in upstate New York. Not long after the movie opens, he's visited by a new parishioner named "Mary Mensana" (Amanda Seyfried). She wants the Rev to call on her husband (Phillip Ettinger), who's back home after a prison stay in Canada. He's an environmental activist who's willing to get arrested for his beliefs. Now, though, he's acting strange, despondent and even more vocal than usual. For Seyfried, the issue at hand is that she's pregnant and her husband wants her to get an abortion. He doesn't believe that children should be brought into such a messed up, disintegrating world. When Hawke does visit him, he starts right in, rattling off all the woes caused by climate change.
"So you see, Reverend, it's immoral to have a child, when the planet won't be habitable by the time he or she is twenty".
Hawke agrees with his sentiments about the climate, and acknowledges the science, but he disagrees with the husband's conclusion. "Surely man has faced crises of equal weight. What about the Ice Age, or the two World Wars just in the past century? What if the men and women who lived through those experiences had chosen to have no children? We might not be talking now. Despair, while understandable from an emotional standpoint, is never the answer. We must always have faith, and hope".
Their conversation is a lengthy scene, and the husband is never swayed by the Reverend's argument. His wife continues to worry about him (she won't go through with the abortion), and one day she calls Hawke back while her husband is out of the house.
"Reverend, I need you to come over right away. I have to show you something. I'm really scared now, and I need your advice". When he gets there, she takes him into the garage (American pronunciation), and pulls a box from a shelf. In it is a suicide vest. "I know I should call the police", Seyfried says, "but I don't want him sent back to prison. Can you help me, Reverend? Tell me what I should do".
Hawke covers for her, and her husband, by removing the vest from the house, vowing to remain silent on the matter. "However", he adds, "if you discover any more explosives or anything dangerous, call the police at once".
We see that Hawke's a drinker, and he's also having stomach problems. This is obviously Paul Schrader's paean to "Diary of a Country Priest", which is in the Top Ten List of many a well-known cineaste. It's Martin Scorcese's favorite movie (and one of mine as well). Robert Bresson's priest in that film is also an alcoholic and also sick to his stomach, and Schrader has Hawke dip his morning bread in Scotch, just as the Country Priest soaks his in wine. So it's clear that Hawke's character is based on the Priest of Ambricourt, and he does a phenomenal job with his portrayal.
A little later, Reverend Hawke gets a call from the husband, asking for a meet-up. The location is a woodland trailhead. I'm gonna give you a spoiler : When Hawke gets there, he sees a body laying in the dirt. The husband has committed suicide.
This throws Hawke's own troubled psyche into a tailspin. We discover the cause of his drinking : guilt over having urged his son to join the military. "It's a family tradition", he tells his superior. "I was the chaplain at VMI, my father was a graduate before that. We have officers in my ancestry going back to the Revolutionary War. My son wanted to continue the tradition and I commended him on his choice. Only he didn't make it back. He was killed in Afghanistan".
Hawke becomes more and more obsessed with the husband's suicide, because he feels guilty about his son's death. He also agrees with the husband's environmental stand, and while he initially argued against despair in his conversations with the man, now that he's dead, Hawke's faith begins to slowly drain away. His drinking increases to the point where he's hiding bottles. It's noticeable to the administrator of his church's sponsor, a mega-group known as Abundant Faith.
When he finds out that the 250th anniversary celebration for his church is to be underwritten by a polluting, planet killing industrialist, he quietly forms a plan to do something about it.
It's extremely heavy stuff, subject wise, but Schrader's talent for pacing turns it into an edgy thriller. He's technically a very good filmmaker, in some respects superior to his partner Scorcese, who is capable of greatness but can also make outright garbage like "Gangs of New York" or "The Wolf of Wall Street". Scriptwise, this is one of Schrader's best works, right up there with "Taxi Driver" and "Rolling Thunder". Ethan Hawke should've received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. I'm gonna give "First Reformed" Two Huge Thumbs Up, it's a tremendous film. See it if you haven't, then watch "Country Priest" for comparison. It's brutal having the weight of the world on your shoulders. ////
The previous night we had another crime thriller, longer and more elaborate than usual. "The Secret Place"(1957) stars Belinda Lee as "Molly", a beautiful 21 year old who runs a snack shop in the slums of East London. "Freddie" (Michael Brooke) is a 14 year old boy with a crush on her. Every day he stops by her shop to buy cocoa and say hello. Once he even brings her a present, a leather belt he's made himself, just for her. Molly does a good job of playing the situation right down the middle. She neither encourages Freddie nor sends him away. Instead, she sees his attention for what it is - an infatuation - and responds by being kind. "We're good friends, aren't we Freddie"?, she says to the serious young lad, who would be her Knight in Shining Armor if she'd let him.
Molly's got a boyfriend, though, a no-goodnik named "Gerry" (Ronald Lewis). He's handsome and wears a sharp suit, but beneath it he's nothing but a criminal. Gerry's planning the robbery of a diamond exchange, with the help of his associate "Steve" (Michael Gwynn), a seasoned vet. They've got the job almost worked out. Steve's even built a cardboard model of the joint to position their every move, but there's still one snag. The exchange is built like a bank, extremely secure and with heavy doors and locks between rooms, and alarms on every wall. How will they even gain entry?
One afternoon with Molly, Gerry gets a brainstorm. "Y'know.....that kid, the one who fancies you? His Dad's a copper, ain't he"? She nods, and we already know that he is. Gerry continues : "What about if...if you could get him to sneak out the old man's uniform for a few hours, say while he was off duty. If you could persuade him - and you could cause he's in love with you - then we could use it to get into the building. I could wear it and say I'm a policeman, give the guard some excuse".
Molly balks at first, because she doesn't want to involve Freddie. "He's just a boy, Gerry". But her brother's in on the job too, as a driver. He's intimidated by Gerry as well, and he gets Molly to go along. The next morning, she asks Freddie if he can pilfer his Dad's uniform, just for an afternoon. "My friends and I wanna use it for a prank". As noted, Freddie's an upright young man, serious in love and life, and for a moment he's taken aback by Molly's request. She's his Queen ; why would she want to play a prank, and why with Dad's uniform?
In the end he does steal it and brings it to her. She in turn takes it to Gerry, who will don it for the diamond heist, which is set to take place that afternoon.
The theft itself is nerve wracking. It doesn't go as perfectly as Gerry and Steve planned, and when it's over and they're back at their hideout, the fence won't deliver, claiming the ice is too hot to sell. Steve wants out of the partnership, so Gerry has to go it alone, with the untrustworthy help of Molly's brother "Mike" (David McCallum, who decided to act this time).
Molly's given her admirer Freddie a box-style gramophone as a present, to reciprocate his friendship. He takes it as an award of the highest order (it's from his Queen), and brings it home to enshrine it. Little does he know - or Molly for that matter - that Gerry has taped the bag of diamonds to the underside of the record player, figuring it's the last place the police would ever look.
The latest newspaper headlines are reporting a "Fake Police Robbery" of the diamond exchange. Freddy puts two and two together and confronts Molly. "You lied to me", he says, devastated that his Queen is dishonest. "You used Dad's uniform to rob that place. You were only pretending to be my friend". Freddie held Molly in the highest place of honor, so now that she's betrayed him he won't talk to her. It's not so much about the robbery or the diamonds, which Freddie says he won't report. For him, it's all about Molly's deceit, when he would've died for her had she ever asked. Now he doesn't trust her anymore, and he despises her boyfriend Gerry, so he takes the bag of diamonds from the inside of the gramophone and hides them in his Secret Place - the upper floor of a semi-demolished brick building, where he hides out at night.
Meanwhile, Gerry is furious about Molly's handover of the gramophone. "What'd you give it to that bloody kid for"?! Her explanation is pointless, so Gerry and a hoodlum friend stake out Freddie's house, waiting for his mother to leave so they can break in and search for the diamonds. Of course, Freddie's stashed them away by now, but they don't know that. Also, sometime during the transfer, the bag opened up and some diamonds fell out. Now the neighborhood children have found them and are trading them in the street. Will this lead the police to question Freddie? And what about his father who's also a policeman? He's noticed that his son is acting strange. But most importantly for Gerry, will he be able to get the diamonds back without alerting Freddie? It'd be unfortunate to have to kill the boy, and dangerous because his Dad's a cop, but he didn't pull that robbery for nothing. He wants the diamonds back, especially now that the fence is back on board.
It's great stuff overall, maybe a tad long at 98 minutes, but made up for by strong acting and suspense. Belinda Lee is superb as the conflicted Molly, who doesn't want to lose Gerry, but also is aghast at how she's involved young Freddie in the crime. Lee is yet another actress with a tragic story. Ronald Lewis, who plays "Gerry", has one too. They helped create a top-notch movie, however, and "The Secret Place" gets Two Big Thumbs Up. Especially good is it's Hitchcockian ending, which takes place on a scaffolding abutting Freddie's Secret Place. It's highly recommended!
So there's your take for the day, a recent heavy hitter from Paul Schrader and a classic British crime flick. I'm back at Pearl's, who just celebrated her 97th birthday on Tuesday. Have a great afternoon, listen to some Beach Boys or some Egg (or both), and let's watch another movie!
I send you tons of love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment