Duvall’s ‘Apostle’: Blessed by Its Creator

The consummate American actor, Robert Duvall has spent a lifetime crafting roles for other filmmakers. Now, in writing and directing “The Apostle,” Duvall has created for himself what could be the defining role of his career.

In a string that began with “To Kill a Mockingbird” and includes 1982’s Oscar-winning performance in “Tender Mercies,” Duvall has managed to work for 35 years, through all kinds of cinematic weather, without ever setting a foot wrong. Able to disappear inside his characters no matter how often we see him, the actor has an impeccable gift for finding the sparks of authenticity and truth that make his people come alive on screen. Yet, even for him, “The Apostle” is something special.

The story of a life-changing crisis that transforms a Pentecostal preacher, this film has been a personal project of Duvall for more than a decade. It’s an excellent fit because the connections between actor and minister--the necessity of belief, the ability to convince, the power of personality and the mastery of the rhythmic cadences of language--are numerous and durable.

Even in a Hollywood that’s in general uncomfortable with religion, alternating between the extremes of hagiography and expose, the committed hellfire and damnation preacher Duvall portrays is a type that gets the shortest shrift. So it is not the least of “The Apostle’s” accomplishments that it doesn’t condescend to belief. Rather, it quietly explores how religion works in people’s lives, what it can and cannot do for those who preach and those who practice.

Though we see him as an even younger child mesmerized by a blind black minster, the call officially came to Euliss “Sonny” Dewey (Duvall) at the age of 12. “The Apostle” features the adult Sonny in numerous charismatic preaching situations, eager to compare the virtues of “Jesus’ mailing list” to “the devil’s hit list” and exulting in the expansive glory of “Holy Ghost power.”

Driving past a wreck on a Texas highway, Sonny pulls over and scampers (the man never just walks) toward a seriously injured couple, intent on getting them to “accept the lord Jesus Christ” as their personal savior. When he returns to his car, he proudly tells his beloved mother (country music’s June Carter Cash), “Momma, we made news in heaven this morning.”

Sonny’s relations with his wife, Jessie (a surprising Farrah Fawcett), the mother of his children and his partner in the Temple of the Living God church, are less serene. It’s through her, not only in what she says but the fearful way she looks at him, that we learn of the man’s darker, womanizing side. When Jessie determines not only to get out of the marriage but to take the church with her, it’s a staggering blow.

Wound terribly tight, capable of jealousy and fury as well as religious fervor, Sonny in extremis has the frightening quality of Robert Mitchum in “Night of the Hunter.” The other side of his positive energy, of his belief that he has a direct line to the Lord, is Sonny’s sense that he’s a law onto himself, a conviction that leads to a brutal act.

Forced to leave Texas, Sonny erases everything of his past except his deep commitment to religion, rebaptizing himself as “the Apostle E.F.” A great self-dramatizer and self-mythologizer, he has conversations with God on his lonely road, assuring the Lord in ringing tones, “wherever thou leadest, I will follow.” He ends up in the tiny town of Bayou Boutte in Louisiana, where another kind of preaching life, another opportunity to get right with God, is waiting for him.

Both as a writer and director, Duvall has put himself at the service of this intriguing character, but that hasn’t harmed the rest of the film. In fact, unlike the classic star turn that obliterates the competition, the integrity of Duvall’s acting brings almost everyone else’s work, including the film’s nonprofessionals, up a notch. Especially telling is the performance of a gaunt, almost unrecognizable Fawcett, whose portrait of a suffering wife makes us believe.

*

Duvall’s unhurried, naturalistic directing style (a recent Film Comment interview mentioned his admiration for Ken Loach’s exceptional “Kes”) fosters the best kind of unhurried authenticity. Though a lot happens in it, “The Apostle” is not plot-driven, and despite its subject matter it’s the opposite of preachy. Confident of the energy inherent in his character, Duvall has been able to create drama that is no less gripping for being quiet and low-key.

Any discussion of “The Apostle” inevitably comes back to its protagonist, to the way Duvall has created as complete a person as the screen allows, a man who can be discussed as fully as a flesh-and-blood acquaintance or even a close friend. It’s an effortlessly complex portrayal that relishes the contradictions and complexities of someone capable of both exalted and debased behavior, a shape-shifter it is possible to be fascinated, repelled and compelled by, all at the same time.

In that same thoughtful Film Comment interview, Duvall mentions a sign his old acting teacher Sandy Meisner had over his desk: “There’s no right and wrong, only truth or non-truth.” By that criteria, or any other you want to name, the Apostle E.F. is screen acting to cherish and remember.

*

* MPAA rating: PG-13 for thematic elements and a related scene of violence. Times guidelines: adult themes and a brutal physical attack.

‘The Apostle’

Robert Duvall: The Apostle E.F.

Farrah Fawcett: Jessie Dewey

Miranda Richardson: Toosie

Todd Allen: Horace

John Beasley: Brother Blackwell

Released by October Films. Writer-director-executive producer Robert Duvall. Producer Rob Carliner. Cinematographer Barry Markowitz. Costumes Douglas Hall. Music David Mansfield. Production design Linda Burton. Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes.

*

* Exclusively at Samuel Goldwyn Pavilion Cinemas, Westside Pavilion, 10800 W. Pico Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 475-0202; and Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 848-3500.