That changes after he pays a visit to a troubled parishioner named Michael (Philip Ettinger), an activist for whom the effects of global warming are not abstract at all, and who's in the grip of an existential crisis prompted by his wife Mary's (Amanda Seyfried) pregnancy. He's a minister at a small church in upstate New York that's more of a historical tourist attraction than a functional place of worship, and when we first meet him, he seems to think about climate change the way a lot of us do, or used to - as inexorably dire but also still distant enough a concept to not cast a shadow over our day-to-day lives. The character’s name is Ernst Toller, he's played by a dyspeptic Ethan Hawke, and he isn't an ecological radical when the film starts. Toward the end of Paul Schrader’s most recent film, First Reformed, the main character straps on an explosive vest with the intention of blowing himself up - along with a church full of other people - driven by an inarticulate but intense desire to strike a blow on behalf of the environment.
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