"But there's also this strange sense of: despair."
Reflecting on the existential battle in First Reformed
Hey—I’m Mohnish Soundararajan, a filmmaker in Portland, Oregon, the director and screenwriter of the upcoming ‘Monochrome’, and a member of Desert Island Studios. ‘Reflections’ is a newsletter where I reflect on film, books, human nature, life, the mystery of who we are, and everything beyond it; reflections are spoken orally into a microphone, then edited and reworked. Enjoy.
Hey you—first off, thanks for being here. Thanks for using your eyes to swivel back and forth. Thanks for all of it. It’s appreciated, I hope you're well, and I hope all of your grandmothers are alive.
With this letter, I wanted to talk about one thing: a film I think you're going to love. I talked about it a smidge on the last letter, but I wanted to dive into the heart of why I connected with it.
Excited for this one. Enjoy—
Reflection: on the existential crisis at the center of ‘First Reformed’
Okay, I’ll say it twice: I loved First Reformed.
It’s tough talking about movies because films are inherently an experiential process. And when you talk about films, you're reducing them down to words, down to concepts, down to sentences. But the problem with words and concepts and sentences is that language and concepts and words can never fully encapsulate the reality of what an experience is like.
Me talking to you verbally about the love that I received when I was a child is so completely different than the experiential reality of that love itself. So while there's a lot about this film that I loved, and a lot about this film that had me thinking, I'm going to reduce it down because I’m strapped by the English language, and time constraints—
This film evoked the universal tension. And it is a tension that I think all of us feel. It is the feeling that—we have our ideals, we have our hope for the future, we have the sense that we want to improve our lives. We look forward to things in the future. But then there's also the strange sense of: despair. It is the sense that maybe your personal future won't work out. Maybe the political situation, the environmental situation, the sociological situation—maybe the way that the world is—maybe: things don't work out. There is, as the film calls it, this “blackness” that one can feel about the world. And this film is about that blackness.
It’s a strange situation to be an individual: because you want to live in a world that is going to be of service to your dreams, to your wishes, to your hopes.
But there's also this niggling sense in the background that maybe it won't. Whether your personal despair is of a personal nature or of a more political, sociological, or environmental nature—I think the battle between hope and despair is an eternal one. And it is that shifting of viewpoints between: I think the future is going to be great versus I think the future is going to be fucking horrible is something First Reformed plumbs.
The film First Reformed is about the Reverend Ernst Toller who—throughout the course of the film—grapples with the environmental reality we find ourselves in. First Reformed—in my estimation—tackles how despair—even well-reasoned despair—warps us like wood being curved over time.
The film is filled with such lovely performances from everyone involved—particularly Ethan Hawke, who adds such nuance to his performance that you think: how did he do that?
But films—truly—can be like an echo of humanity. When you watch a film—you might not share the specifics predicament or specific fears of the character—but their feelings and primal instincts can be an echo of your feelings, a refraction or a deviation of your interiority. You might not know what it’s like to be a Reverend spiraling into despair about the environmental crisis—but because we’re all inextricably connected, in ways that apply to you and your own life, you also do, too.
