In the opening of Robert Duvall's new film The Apostle, a
sedan on a lonesome stretch of blacktop pulls to a halt near a cluster of
police cars and onlookers. A wrecked car sits silent in the weeds. The
sedan door opens, and a man bounds across the field to the scene of the
crash. He peers inside and finds a boy covered in blood. Leaning in, he
urges the passenger, Christian or no Christian, to use his dying breath to
offer his soul to God. His hand administers comfort; his leg kicks wildly
at the state trooper who would pull him away. Duty done, the man strides
back across the field like joy walking. "Mama," he crows to his beaming
mother, "we made news in Heaven this morning." The sedan pulls away.
All told, the scene takes only a few minutes. But how much Duvall
is able to accomplish! Right up front, he lets us know that his character,
a charismatic Pentecostal evangelist named Euliss "Sonny" Dewey, is a
prideful son-of-a-gun with a temper and an ugly streak of
self-righteousness. (Too bad if that passenger's a Buddhist.) He's also a
devout man, though, and the scene's remarkable coda shows his faith is
indeed capable of working miracles. The miracle is that The Apostle never
backs away from the contradictions in Sonny's character, or from the jumble
of moods and emotions in that first scene. What Duvall has created is the
most complex, and certainly the most entertaining, American movie ever made
about a flawed man of God.
Is Sonny a fake or a flake? Neither, exactly; but to Duvall's credit as
actor, writer, and director, he always leaves us wondering. Sonny leads a
thriving congregation in Texas, where he tours the revival circuit like a
big-name motivational speaker. Then comes the fall. Fed up with his
drinking, his womanizing, and his beatings, his wife Jessie (Farrah
Fawcett) strikes up an affair with a younger minister. They wrest away
control of his church. Sonny drinks; Sonny rails at his maker all hours of
the night. Sonny takes a baseball bat to the young minister's head. The man
of God is now a man on the run.
So Sonny throws himself once more in God's hands, and he buries his
identity, along with his car, in a pond. At this point, I hate to say more
about the plot, because so much of the film's pleasures lie in the casual
unfolding of the story and being swept along in Sonny's wake. Let's just
say that Duvall sends Sonny on a journey of redemption that isn't in the
least bit preachy or sickly sweet; that Barry Markowitz's cinematography
captures perfectly the sticky heat and dusty streets of the Deep South;
that Duvall envisions an integrated community that isn't a contradiction in
terms; and that he lingers over faces and locations that no big-budget
venture would give a second look. Sonny's America, a world of jackleg
revivals and small-town garages and one-room AM stations, is one we've
hardly ever seen at the movies. It even looks like someplace somebody might
actually live.
Sonny's flaws are serious and scary, and Duvall doesn't downplay them.
Throughout the movie, whenever Sonny does something noble, it's almost
always balanced by a twinge of self-preservation, hubris, or personal gain.
He can be cowardly--he won't visit his ailing mother (June Carter Cash at
her most angelic) because he's ducking the police--and even after he grants
himself a spiritual rebirth in a muddy creek, he's not above settling an
argument with his fists. Indeed, Duvall suggests his faith may only
reinforce his dangerous self-righteousness.
But in most movies, Sonny's failings as a human being would prove him a
scam artist: He'd be Elmer Gantry, or Steve Martin's slick-talking hustler
in Leap of Faith. Instead, Sonny's genuine spirituality coexists
uneasily with a hotheaded nature--the age-old war between mind and flesh.
If he were conning people, he wouldn't risk capture by building a new
congregation. If he were perfect, he'd have no need to seek or extol
redemption.
Duvall plays Sonny the preacher as a born entertainer, and,
refreshingly, he doesn't think that makes Sonny a hypocrite. The church I
attended as a kid was Baptist, not Pentecostal, but every year we waited to
see what the visiting revival preacher would have up his sleeve. One told
humorous sermon-length anecdotes; another passed out "Bible Bucks" with
Jesus' face on them. But nobody doubted the sincerity of their message; if
anything, people were grateful for the effort. Duvall spent years
researching the world of grassroots evangelism, and the early glimpses he
gives us of religion as traveling show are wonderful: a tent revival where
Sonny and a half-dozen preachers line up and trade off testimony like jazz
soloists; a bilingual Hispanic service where he demonstrates Jesus
reckoning Godzilla-style vengeance on "el Diablo."
The cast mixes non-professional and untrained actors with ringers like
Billy Bob Thornton and Miranda Richardson; among the many memorable
supporting players, Zelma Loyd as a parishioner, Rick Dial (the repair-shop
owner in Sling Blade) as a radio-station owner, and Billy Joe Shaver
as Sonny's loyal pal stand out. But the movie is Robert Duvall's triumph
from start to finish. As a send-off, he gives himself a 20-minute sermon
that's one rousing, resourceful piece of screen acting, an incantation of
fervor, fear, and regret that arcs like lightning. Sonny Dewey may not be
touched by divine inspiration, but his creator--well, that's another
story.