In the introduction to the new edition of his critical text, Transcendental Style in Film, Paul Schrader recalls the temerity with which he first wrote the book as a graduate student in 1971, as well as the panel discussion a half-century later that ultimately led him to start rethinking his earlier work. It seems that his recent rethinking was not content to be cloistered away on the page; Schrader needed to put his new theory into practice. With ‘First Reformed’, he has done so in a magnificent fashion.