ReFocus: The Films of Paul Schrader ReFocus: The Films of Paul Schrader

Abstract This is a book review


Moore, Michelle E. and Brian Brems, editors, ReFocus: The Films of Paul Schrader (Edinburgh University Press: 2020).
Assuming a "Canon of Religion and Film" exists, which American film makers are part of it? In other words, which American film makers should all religion and film scholars be conversant in, and should be included on all religion and film syllabi?
This is a difficult question, as it should be. Answers might range from Cecil B DeMille to Woody Allen, from Frank Capra to the Wachowski Sisters. 1 Martin Scorsese should be high on anyone's list, but if one looks at who wrote the scripts for some of his most religious films (however one defines that term)-Raging Bull, or The Last Temptation of Christ, or the underseen and underrated Bringing Out the Dead-one learns the name Paul Schrader.
Schrader, it turns out, not only has written some of the most religiously significant screenplays in the last half century for Scorsese to direct, but has directed his own screenplays, where religion plays a key role. In Schrader's second film as writer-director, 1979's Hardcore, a devout Calvinist father from Grand Rapids, Michigan searches for his teenage daughter who has become a porn actress in California. Almost forty years later, Schrader, approaching the age of seventy, wrote and directed another film about a man with strong Calvinist convictions: 2017's First Reformed, about Rev. Ernest Toller, the spiritually bereft pastor of a historic Dutch Reformed church in upstate New York whose congregation is rapidly dwindling. One would not be surprised then that Schrader was raised in the Reformed tradition and studied philosophy and theology at Calvin College in Grand Rapids.
Looking deeper into Schrader's filmography, one would find that even his films that don't feature explicitly religious characters, fall comfortably (although "comfortably" is not an adjective that should ever be applied to Schrader's challenging films and notoriously prickly personality) into the "Religion and Film" Canon: according to Richard Brody, a film critic for The New Yorker, Schrader "makes films about people who do whatever they do, however profane, with an absolute devotion that amounts essentially to religious, Christian inspiration." 2 But Schrader is not only a screenwriter and director. He is also a film theorist (and, I would argue, a theorist of religion): his writings appear regularly in Film Comment magazine and his monograph, first published in 1972 and based on his Master's Thesis from USC, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer has been lauded as "indispensable […] for students interested in spirituality and cinema." 3 The revised edition has been extensively reviewed in the pages of this journal. 4 Transcendental style, for Schrader, is not merely the "spiritual" (whatever that is) on film, but "like the mass, transforms experience into a repeatable ritual which can be repeatedly Almost every chapter of this volume contains something worthwhile for the scholar of religion and film, and some chapters are essential. The introduction, by the co-editors, is a valuable overview, with several references to Schrader's interest in theology. Schrader, famously, comes from a "strict Calvinist background" (2) and didn't see his first movie until he was seventeen. The introduction is concerned with Schrader's connection with Scorsese, noting his best and his most well-known are those he wrote for Martin Scorsese to direct (the three mentioned above, plus Taxi Driver), even as it makes the case for Schrader "escaping the shadow of his frequent collaborator" (10). 6 Chapter One, "Schrader on Style" by Erik Backman is hugely important because it is mostly through style not content that Schrader communicates religious themes (with a couple of exceptions, like the films mentioned previously). Style was the bridge between his spiritual life and his filmic output. This chapter mounts an impressive analysis of Schrader's directorial style which concludes the film (and was also used, to a different but equally powerful effect, at the end of the Coen Brothers' True Grit (2010)). However, in his interview that ends this volume, Schrader notes that such intertextual references are mere "eye-winking… that's play. I mean, that's not real" (220).
While First Reformed is undoubtedly Schrader's triumph, I cannot agree with the editors claim that any future films "will likely be codas to First Reformed's powerful conclusion" (9).
Schrader's most recent film at the time of this writing, 2021's excellent The Card Counter (2021) is no mere coda. And, though not as explicitly religious as its predecessor, with a title character named Tillich and whose back tattoo states "I trust my life to providence; I trust my soul to grace," the religious aspect of the film is not exactly subtle. 7 Like so many of Schrader's films, The Card Counter focuses on an obsessed man who writes in his journal (which we hear in voiceover), while living in a metaphorical prison of his own making. In this case, the man is William Tell (born Tillich), a professional gambler and former torturer at Abu Ghraib prison, played convincingly by Oscar Isaac. Like First Reformed, The Card Counter is a portrait of spiritual desolation with a violent conclusion and in which the Iraq War is an important part of the backstory. The former is more mystical flavored and the latter plays with stoicism, as we see Tell making the spartan surroundings of a Motel 6 (or "Motel 7" in this film) even more ascetic by wrapping the furniture in white cloth and reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Film critic Christina Newland calls it "a film so zeroed in on incarceration, literal and spiritual" and notes its "spiritual kinship with Schrader's First Reformed in its indictment of the inner rot of the American status quo." 8 And, as of this writing, the 75-year-old Schrader is shooting The Master Gardener, described as being about "a meticulous horticulturist who is devoted to tending the grounds of a beautiful estate and pandering to his employer, the wealthy dowager." 9 Perhaps Schrader's continuing output would merit a second edition of ReFocus: The Films of Paul Schrader? I hope so, as this is a truly outstanding volume. Sure, there are some repetitions. For example, the same quote from Transcendental Style in Film about how its titular theme seeks to "maximize a mystery