Ernst Toller, a troubled priest of a small church in upstate New York, begins to spiral out of control after a soul-shaking encounter with Mary and her unstable environmental activist husband. Consumed by thoughts that the world is in danger, Toller embarks on a perilous self-assigned undertaking.

That Paul Schrader is a disciple of Bresson and Dreyer is nowhere more evident than in his towering trilogy of films on contemporary America, its histories of violence and its hopes for redemption. As the first of three spartan protagonists striving for salvation, Ethan Hawke is transcendent.