Okay, here's the deal. It'd be stupid of me to get into a debate about religion with you folks. Usually, I'd just as soon get buck nekkid and climb a cactus than discuss church and religion and G-O-D. Either way, you end up getting stuck where you don't need to be. It's not that I believe or not, it's just that, sooner or later in conversations like that, somebody's gonna have a different opinion than you, and, sooner or later, somebody's gonna declare somebody else less of a Christian than themselves, and then the fight starts in force. Jeez, I mean, entire wars have been fought over the idea of one group's God being more divine than the other group. Who needs that in your living room during poker? I'd rather hit myself in the head with a tack hammer nine times, all things considered.
But, I must admit, that whole idea is what prompts me to go see movies like Leap of Faith, Steve Martin's film about a con man posing as an evangelical tent preacher. Folks always go for the seemier side of a subject, and religion is no different. I confess that I loved every minute of Jim and Tammy Faye's downfall, 'cause the outrageous truth became more and more crazy every day. Same with Swaggart and that floozy in New Orleans. And Oral Roberts getting that death threat from the Lord if he didn't scratch up $20 million was an absolute scream.
And, yes, I was expecting this same line of thought from Robert Duvall's new movie The Apostle. Anyone who has seen Duvall's work knows the depth he can take a character to. Imagine what he could do with the role of a preacher man, right?
Well, almost. The Apostle is an amazing piece of work, one that has taken Duvall ten years or more to make. HE is the producer, the director, the writer, and the star of this movie. But he doesn't take the easy way, giving us another dark side of religion. Instead, he shows a complete picture, good and bad, and lets the viewer decide what's good and bad. And, folks, the movie is what's good.
Duvall's story is about a preacher named Euliss Dewey, nicknamed Sonny. Sonny is a believer in every sense of the word. He's electrifying in the pulpit, with no fear of those who challenge him, as seen when he kicks away emergency crews to get at a young man trapped in his car after a car wreck. He offers the comfort that no one else can, asking the man, "Do you accept the Lord as your personal savior?"
While the others can save the man's life, Sonny wants to make sure his soul is saved first. The double-edged sword of faith has made Sonny arrogant, convinced that his faith is powerful enough to save others.
That faith becomes challenged when Sonny's picture-perfect wife (Farrah Fawcett) leaves him. Sonny immediately tells her to pray. She tells him that the Lord has already given her the answers she needed; Sonny is completely bewildered. He becomes a sculpture of disbelief and captured rage. And that rage explodes one day when, in a moment of blind anger, he takes a Louisville Slugger upside a man's head. It is that one swing that erases his life as he knows it.
He ends up in a small town in Louisiana. He renames himself "The Apostle E.F.", worms his way into a preaching gig on the local AM radio station, and starts trying to wriggle into the heart of a local woman named Toosie (Miranda Richardson). He starts restoring a church, and gives it a new name, too, calling it the One Way Road to Heaven. Slowly, the congregation begins to grow, and Sonny's redemption begins to occur.
There are some dynamite performances in this thing, notably from the always-rockin' Richardson and John Beasley, playing a retired black minister who takes Sonny's side to the people. There's a quick role by Billy Bob Thornton that is murderous. He plays a man with an angry soul, and an even darker grudge against the world. This confrontation, between Thornton and Duvall, is worth the ticket price alone. And, would somebody please tell me where Farrah Fawcett came into this mix? This is not the "Letterman" version of Farrah, all goofy and a mite tapped in the head. Here, she offers up memories of the talent that blossomed in things like The Burning Bed. Here's hoping whatever she plans to do in the future is more like this than that super-weird Pay-Per-View-Body Painting mess she put out a while back.
But, more than anything else, this show belongs to Robert Duvall. His portrayal of Sonny Dewey is just plain perfect. It's Duvall at his best, showing the complexity of this character in easy-to-read faces. The acting here is almost a study in the science of characterization, giving the audience a piece-by-piece look at the puzzle of Sonny, The Apostle E.F. If you'll forgive the metaphor, Bobby knows Sonny like a father knows a child, and it's a literal truth when you realize that Duvall's spent ten years working with this character, sharpening and defining the role to a point where the actor can disappear and the character just takes life, steering the man rather than the man steering the performance.
That being said, it's almost easy to forgive the self-indulgence of Duvall the director and the failings of Duvall the writer. The film drags occasionally, and the shunning of the "Hollywood" idea of redemption building through a series of slickly-edited jump cuts and scene-switching, to save time costs him a little in fluidity. While the film does turn on every emotion, it grinds to an almost-halt more than once, leaving you wanting to yell out, "Aw, man! Don't stop now!" The script leaves some characters just danglin' in the wind, developed to a certain convenient point and then left in limbo. All of which can be forgiven, sure, but it does steal a little of the thunder.
I can't call it perfect, friends and neighbors, but The Apostle is still in a class by itself. I hesitate to use the word "miracle," so as not to step on any true believer's toes, but if there's such a thing as a near-perfect miracle, hang a poster for this movie next to the entry in the dictionary. Duvall will definitely be in the hunt for the Golden Boy come March. The only question is, in how many different categories?
Copyrighted image courtesy of October Films.
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in for observation