02/13/98
MOVIE REVIEW: The Apostle
Glory be to Duvall's flawed prophet

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

**** (out of five)
Starring Robert Duvall, Farrah Fawcett, Miranda Richardson, Todd Allen, John Beasley, June Carter Cash, Walter Goggings, Billy Joe Shaver, Billy Bob Thornton. An October Films release written and directed by Duvall. Not rated, contains violence, adult themes. Running time: 148 minutes.

Robert Duvall got a best-actor Oscar nomination this week for his role as a fiery Southern preacher in The Apostle.

That was no surprise. But after seeing the film, you might also wonder why he wasn't also nominated for best director and best original screenplay.

Duvall is pretty much a one-man show in The Apostle, a highly original piece about an evangelical preacher who loves the Lord, brings people to the message of love that Jesus preached and yet who keeps tripping over his own moral dilemmas.

Duvall's E.F. Dewey, who is also known as Sonny to his Texas flock, can rouse his parishioners to a wild frenzy of singing and praise, but there's trouble in his little paradise. A womanizer himself, he is filled with anxiety because his wife, Jessie (Farrah Fawcett), has taken up with his assistant and wants out of their marriage.

Perhaps worse, from E.F.'s standpoint, is that Jessie is forcing him out of his own church, which he loves so much. Strike three comes when E.F., in a fit of jealous rage, takes a baseball bat to his wife's lover in front of their children and many of his flock.

It's not long after this that E.F., a pragmatic man who recognizes the writing on the wall, is on the run from the law, though he can't outrun his conscience. He takes nothing with him except his conviction in the Lord's love for him no matter how much he has betrayed his faith, and his deep-seated need to proselytize with great fervor. We see an amusing show of his talents near the start of the film when Sonny preaches to three different kinds of audiences -- a tent revival meeting that turns into a sort of tag-team match between several equally enthusiastic preachers, a suited businessman's group and a Hispanic group with a female translator mirroring E.F.'s actions as well as his words on the podium.

Respect for the subject

E.F.'s preaching fever has been honed from childhood, when he attended a black evangelical church. It's demonstrated clearly more than 50 years later when he comes upon a deadly traffic accident and offers comfort -- and a road to heaven -- to one of the dying victims in a scene enormously powerful and touching. In a world where filmmakers usually treat revivalist preachers as objects of scorn or comic scapegoats, the most amazing thing about The Apostle is its respect for its subject and for the minor miracles that can occur.

One of those is the surprising turn that comes about when E.F. encounters a small-minded redneck (Billy Bob Thornton) who wanders into one of E.F.'s more enthusiastic church gatherings one night. The mysterious redneck, who E.F. quickly and wrongly assumes has come to stir up trouble about his past, winds up in a fistfight with E.F. in a startling sequence.

He'll return later, with his friends and a bulldozer to level E.F.'s church. But the unexpected outcome of this encounter is stunningly and sensitively played out by Duvall and Thornton in an emotionally draining scene.

The Apostle E.F. loves preaching too much to let his calling slip away while he's on the run, even though he takes a job as a short-order cook to pay his way. Soon he has taken an abandoned church in Louisiana bayou country and infused it with his special brand of preaching.

From a meager start, he fills the pews and is even broadcasting on a local radio station. He also tries to begin again, in a too-eager bid for romance, with one of his new converts (Miranda Richardson), a woman who hasn't yet gotten over her painful marital separation.

Dramatic tension

Much of the film is played out with joy and inspiration, although E.F. is constantly looking over his shoulder, expecting his little jig to be up. It gives him and the film an edginess that keeps the tension high.

Duvall's performance -- for he is the title character and the film -- is both mesmerizing and risky. It's not easy to make such a towering, inspirational character out of someone who has such feet of clay.

It's Duvall's sincerity that gives E.F. his ingratiating spirit and his clear-eyed vision of faith and healing, whether he's saving a man from drink in a barroom or baptizing himself in a river.