The Rise of A24 - First Reformed (2018) and Ordet (1955)

In our fifth episode of The Rise of A24 series, we go to church with Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (2018) and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet (1955).

Special Guests: Jen and Sarah of the great podcasts - Movies & Us and TV & Us

Paul Schrader has spent a lifetime wrestling with the question of transcendence. From Taxi Driver to Master Gardener, his protagonists are often solitary men seeking clarity and redemption in an indifferent world. In First Reformed, Schrader distilled decades of his own Calvinist guilt and expansive cinematic theory into a stark, haunting meditation on faith. The film follows Ethan Hawke's Reverend Toller as he spirals into despondency. He is unable to cope with the violence, sin, apathy, and immorality that swirls around his life. With A24's strong backing, Schrader achieved critical redemption with First Reformed. The film earned widespread acclaim and Schrader received long-overdue recognition as one of America's last great morality filmmakers.

Schrader was deeply inspired by the 1955 Danish film Ordet. This austere masterpiece delves into the inner workings of a farming family grappling with the outer edges of religious despair and madness. It is slow, serious, and pure cinema. The molasses pace proves worthwhile as the film explodes into religious ecstasy in its final act. While long considered one of the most important films in world cinema, its stature has diminished in recent years as we have loosened our grip of organized religion. Still, this work of art proclaimed a spiritual boldness that has rarely been matched in the genre.