“First Reformed,” the latest film from pugnacious director/writer Paul Schrader, is as austere and revelatory as a church confessional. Blessed with a sense of rigor and emotional suffocation rare in mainstream American movies, it’s a bleak portrait of a man in the midst of a spiritual breakdown that is only slightly undone by its rather unsatisfying conclusion.

The man in question is Rev. Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke in one of his best roles), an ill, alcoholic man of the cloth and formerly married military chaplain still living under the dark cloud of guilt from encouraging his soldier son to go to Iraq, where he was killed. Toller’s wife subsequently left him, his sense of purpose withered to mere existence, and now he lives isolated and alone and, presumably, will die the same way.

His one distraction is being the pastor of First Reformed, a rustic, historic church and stop along the Underground Railroad in upstate New York that’s charming enough to be a minor tourist attraction but not charmed enough to have anything but a rapidly dwindling congregation. What’s saving First Reformed from financial collapse is an alliance with a nearby well-funded megachurch, Abundant Life Ministries, run by Rev. Jeff Jeffers (a surprisingly strong dramatic turn from Cedric Kyles, aka comedian Cedric the Entertainer).

As First Reformed is getting ready to fete its 250th anniversary, Jeffers is planning a major public-relations celebration with all the local political and community bigwigs in attendance, and Toller is the point man to make sure everything goes smoothly. But things take an unexpected turn when Mary (Amanda Seyfried) walks into his church and his life.

She’s worried about her husband, Michael (Philip Ettinger), a disillusioned environmental activist who is being sucked down into the wormhole of extremism. Mary’s alarm bells really go off when she discovers a suicide vest in her garage.

Toller is meant to be Michael’s counselor, the one who gets him to back away from the brink. But, in Toller’s fragile psychological condition, he finds himself pulled into Michael’s world, as sure as a planet teetering too close to a collapsing star.

Questions of faith, masculinity, sacrifice and salvation have long been part of Schrader’s work — the former member of the Calvinist Christian Reformed Church, who didn’t see a film until he was 17, wrote “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull” and “The Last Temptation of Christ” — and “First Reformed” ranks as one of his strongest efforts juggling these themes.

Stylistically, “First Reformed” also stands apart. Beautifully shot in an aspect ratio that makes the image square (as opposed to the usual rectangle), the film is at first discomfiting. The static shots and long takes, so different from much of current American moviemaking, hark back to a different time and different continent. That’s no accident as, in 1972, Schrader wrote the highly praised book “Transcendental Style in Film,” a tribute to the “slow cinema” of Denmark’s Carl Theodor Dreyer, Japan’s Yasujiro Ozu and France’s Robert Bresson, and “First Reformed” is a filmic salute to those influences.

In recent years, Schrader has been on something of a slide. The man who once was at the forefront of cinematic conversations with such films as “American Gigolo,” “Hardcore” and “Blue Collar” was cranking out movies few remember and even fewer celebrate.

But this lion still roars as he gives a different meaning to the term “faith-based film.” “First Reformed” is a rewarding, if astringent, experience.

cary.darling@chron.com