Immanence All the Way Down (and Across): Horizontal Transcendence in First Reformed

Austere filmmaking techniques create an experience that requires active viewer participation. Static camera work, absence of non-diegetic sound, and lingering shots that refuse to cut on action slow perception and withhold release. This withholding generates desire, which is fulfilled through an unexpected decisive image or act. The result is stasis and acceptance of parallel reality, described as transcendence. Transcendence is positioned as beyond normal sense experience, while what it transcends is defined as the immanent. A spirit guide role is assigned to the director, escorting viewers toward the Wholly Other outside the physical world. The film centers on a pastor whose despair escalates toward martyrdom and then collapses in the final moments.

"“The enemy of transcendence is immanence.” Transcendental films deploy an “austere toolkit”—a static camera, no non-diegetic sound, lingering shots that refuse to cut on action—to create a viewing experience that demands active participation. Where most movies lean toward you aggressively, transcendental movies require you to lean into them. This slow withholding creates a desire for release, which arrives in the form of what Schrader calls “the Decisive Moment”: an unexpected image or act resulting in “a stasis, an acceptance of parallel reality-transcendence.”"

"“The Transcendent is beyond normal sense experience,” Schrader writes, “and that which it transcends is, by definition, the immanent.” The transcendental film director is a “spirit guide,” escorting the viewer toward the Wholly Other, something entirely outside the physical world. The viewing experience is shaped so that the audience must actively participate in perceiving meaning rather than being pushed by conventional cinematic momentum."

"First Reformed follows this blueprint deliberately. The film centers on Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke), a small-church pastor consumed by existential despair over humanity's environmental future, whose grief and rage build toward a planned act of martyrdom and then, in the final moments, collapse"

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