First Reformed — the lament tradition of the prophets

What the film does

Paul Schrader’s First Reformed premiered at Venice in August 2017 and entered wide release in 2018. The film follows Reverend Ernst Toller, pastor of First Reformed Church in upstate New York — a small, historic congregation with an aging building, a thin attendance, and a corporate megachurch partnership it depends on for survival. Toller counsels a young parishioner, Michael (Philip Ettinger), who is in ecological despair about the future of the climate. The film traces Toller’s deepening journal-keeping, his physical decline, and his increasing identification with Michael’s despair.

Schrader has been explicit, in interviews and in his book Transcendental Style in Film (revised edition, 2018), about the film’s debt to Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest (1951) and the wider “transcendental style” tradition (Bresson, Ozu, Dreyer). The film does not quote scripture as text. Its register on doubt, complaint against God, and the felt distance between the pastoral role and the pastoral interior is the register of the biblical prophetic lament tradition.

The biblical lament tradition

Three biblical traditions are worth setting against the film:

Jeremiah’s “confessions” (Jeremiah 11:18-23; 12:1-6; 15:10-21; 17:14-18; 18:18-23; 20:7-18) are six passages in the book of Jeremiah in which the prophet voices personal complaint against God. The complaints are unusually direct. Jeremiah 20:7 in particular:

“You have deceived me, O LORD, and I was deceived. You have overcome me and prevailed. I am a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me.” (Jeremiah 20:7, BSB)

The Hebrew verb translated deceived is patah (פָּתָה). HALOT s.v. patah: “to be open-minded, simple; piel: to persuade, entice, deceive.” The verb’s range is wide — persuade, seduce, entice, with overtones of having been talked into something one would not otherwise have done. Translations differ: KJV’s deceived; NIV’s deceived; ESV’s deceived; NJPS’s enticed. The Hebrew permits the harder reading; Jeremiah is making the harder accusation. The prophetic call has cost him; he says, in effect, you talked me into a vocation that has destroyed me.

The Jeremiah confessions are notable precisely because they remain within the prayer-to-God framework while voicing accusations that would be impossible in many other registers. The complaints are addressed to God, and the book is in the canon — the tradition preserves them as legitimate prayer.

The lament psalms — roughly a third of the Psalter is lament. Most lament psalms move from complaint to expressed trust within the psalm (the genre form). One does not: Psalm 88. The psalm runs through a sustained accusation and closes without resolution:

“I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom You no longer remember, who are cut off from Your care.” (Psalm 88:5, BSB)

“You have taken from me my friends and loved ones; darkness is now my closest companion.” (Psalm 88:18, BSB)

Psalm 88 closes on darkness is now my closest companion. There is no upbeat. The psalm is preserved by the tradition without an editorial correction.

Habakkuk 1. The prophet opens his book with a complaint:

“How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but You do not hear, or cry out to You, ‘Violence!’ but You do not save?” (Habakkuk 1:2, BSB)

The Hebrew phrase translated how long is ʿad ʾānāh (עַד אָנָה) — until when? — the standard lament opening across the prophets and psalms (Pss 13:1-2; 74:10; 79:5; 89:46; 90:13; 94:3).

The parallel in the film

Several features of First Reformed run in this register:

• Complaint addressed within the prayer frame. Toller’s journal is the film’s voiceover. The journal addresses God. It does not present as theological essay; it presents as prayer — angry, deteriorating, sometimes incoherent prayer, but prayer.
• The pastoral role split from the pastoral interior. Toller continues to function as pastor while his interior collapses. The Jeremiah confessions are spoken by a prophet still doing his prophetic work; the doubling is structural to the form.
• Ecological grief as the proximate occasion. Michael’s despair, which becomes Toller’s, is grief about the destruction of creation. The biblical lament tradition does not have a direct ecological vocabulary, but the prophets’ grief about the land (Hos 4:1-3; Jer 12:4-13; Joel 1:10-20) is comparable.
• No resolution within the moment. The film does not, in its body, supply the consolation. Like Psalm 88, like Jeremiah 20, the lament is registered as lament without an editorial fix.

The film’s final sequence is widely debated; this entry does not adjudicate the multiple readings of the closing scene. The lament register is present whether the closing scene is read as redemption, as collapse, or as something else.

What this entry does not argue

This entry does not claim that First Reformed is a biblical film. It does not argue for or against Schrader’s theology, Toller’s choices, or the film’s resolution. It documents that the register the film operates in — complaint to God within the still-pastoral frame — has a long and canonical antecedent.

For the wider treatment of the prophetic role in scripture, see Chazon — prophetic vision.

To read the relevant lament passages in other translations:

• Jeremiah 20 — NIV →
• Psalm 88 — NIV →
• Habakkuk 1 — NIV →