Gaby Wood Movie of the week
Robert Duvall has been thinking about making The Apostle, a film about a Pentecostal preacher in the American South, for more than 20 years. He has called preaching ”the only authentic American art form”. Some time ago Duvall was due to star in a Sidney Lumet film about two preachers and, though the part fell through, he had done so much research he decided to write his own script. Now he has directed it, stars in it, and put up a large part of the money himself. Any concerns he had about directing and acting at the same time were dismissed by Dennis Hopper, who just said, ”It’s easy, man.”
Easy or not, The Apostle is clearly an actor’s and not a director’s film. It’s Duvall’s baby, born of his tendency to research his roles extensively, of the desire to showcase his own talent for methodically inhabiting a character, and, to some extent, of his background as a maker of documentaries. The first film he directed, We’re Not the Jet Set (1977), was a documentary about Nebraska farm workers, and his first directed feature film, Angelo, My Love (1983), starred the gypsy boy on whom the part was based. In interviews he speaks of making things ”as real as possible”.
The result is a tour de force, a film driven by a single virtuoso performance but – perhaps because of its intended ”authenticity” – otherwise lacking in artistry or pace. It’s both slow and stunning; Duvall is impressive, but there is little else to keep the attention. Some audiences have found him so entrancing they have experienced a near-conversion in the cinema. But although a great performance can make a film, a great performance is not the same thing as a great film.
The storyline follows Sonny, a Texan Pentecostal preacher who has been ”a minister of the lord” since he was brought back from the dead, aged 12. Sonny is married to Jessie, a harried and very un- angel-like Farrah Fawcett; they have two kids. But Sonny is no saint.
His moods are changeable: his acts of forceful inspiration alternate with a brittle aggression. When Jessie goes off with a younger minister and plots to take the church away from Sonny, he whacks the other man over the head with a bat. ”I think he might be on the road to glory this time,” says Sonny, half-pleased.
His own road to repentance leads him to a new life with a new name in Louisiana. The locals warm to him through his rousing chants – he gets a prayer slot on the radio and sets up a church, the ”One-way road to heaven”. He flirts with Miranda Richardson, who works at the radio station, and converts a racist unbeliever, played by the curmudgeonly Billy Bob Thornton. Just when the world is on his side, the police catch up with him.
The real story, though, is in Duvall’s face. How should we feel about this man and his temper? Will he kill again? Somehow, even when he is arrested, the film remains ambiguous: is he paying for his sins or is he an apostle wrongly punished by earthly powers? And the congregation – are they being deceived, taken in by his dubious charisma? Or are they genuinely brought nearer to God by him?
It’s this unreadable nature of Duvall’s portrayal that leads you to notice things about his physical presence: he has a tough, greased- leather complexion; every so often you see the back of his sweaty neck in close-up; and his slicked mousy hair sits slightly away from his skin.
In his final preaching scene Duvall’s face is concentrated above a large microphone, the cable wrapped around his thumb, his hand up in front of him. ”We’re gonna have a Holy Ghost explosion,” he shouts. ”How do we know the Lord loves us tonight? Because! Because! Because! He sent his only begotten son …” And he incites his audience: ”We’re gonna short-circuit the devil tonight. Devil get behind me!”
He steps from side to side, sweeping his hands behind him, ”I said get behind me!” This is the kind of talk that leads a venerable black minister to remark, ”When you preachin’ on the radio most of the white people think you’re black. Now the coloured people, they know you ain’t black, but they sure do like your style of preachin’.” It’s this that is the film’s reason for being: a repetitive, musical, lyrical effect in words and manner. Duvall pulls it off astoundingly.
Although he received an Oscar for best actor in 1983, Duvall is mostly known for his supporting roles. And the support he has offered is no secondary affair. His Tom Hagen in the first two Godfather films was a model of ominous normality and receding camouflage.
In Apocalypse Now he is unforgettable as Kilgore, the beefy Vietnam bully who goes gooey-eyed over the smell of napalm. Nothing can touch or scare him; a bomb drops, everyone ducks except him. It’s as if only Duvall knows it’s a movie. His first film role was in 1962, as the spooky but well-meaning Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. He doesn’t appear until the end, tentative and stiff, as if in a stupor.
These performances are very different, but they all have a subdued force. Duvall brings some brilliantly tense contradictions to The Apostle, yet somehow his character still seems out of place in the limelight.
The Apostle opens on circuit on Friday July 3