14 FiRsT ReFoRmed

Schrader has spent a career chasing down “God’s lonely man”, from Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle onwards. His latest agonised supplicant is Reverend ernst Toller, played by ethan Hawke, a smalltown pastor looking for deliverance. Matters moral, spiritual and ethical increasingly detain him until – radicalised, with his health ailing – he is forced to ask, “Will God forgive us?” Bad times lie ahead.