Review of The Apostle (1997) by Edith N — 19 Oct 2009

Moved by the Spirit.

I come from a very different culture than these characters. I was raised middle class Catholic in a suburban area near Los Angeles. I knew people in high school who probably went to this kind of church, though pretty much what I knew about their religious beliefs was that they thought everyone they didn't agree with was going to Hell. Also one of the security guards went to their church and tended to try toning them down. Father Chris, the Franciscan, was nice and jolly, and he gave very funny homilies. On the other hand, charismatic to that extent he was not. It wasn't the kind of church where you'd get up and start shouting hallelujah. Certainly there was no speaking in tongues for anyone, though the verse which introduces the concept got read in mass every year on Pentecost. Because of all this, I cannot tell you how accurate to this kind of belief the movie is. Others will have to fill that in for you.

Sonny (Robert Duvall) is a great, intense minister of the Pentecostal, Baptist stripe. He finds out his wife, Jessie (Farrah Fawcett) is fooling around on him, and in the middle of an argument about his wife and kids with the guy, hits the guy with a baseball bat. You can't stick around after that, and so he goes on the lam. He goes from his life of preaching everywhere to anyone who'll listen, from being the minister at a big church, to building a congregation in a small town in Louisiana. He fixes the church up, goes from seven members to a church full, Saves Billy Bob Thornton, develops a community. Only back home, it turns out that his wife's lover has died. His mother (June Carter Cash, two years his senior), is sick and in the hospital--but he can't visit her or even call without the police being on to him. He loves his new congregation, and he feels he is doing real good there, but there is still the pull of home, even ignoring the fact that he does have those kids back home.

Robert Duvall really believed in this movie. He wrote the script fifteen years or so before anyone would let him make it--at that, he ended up putting in literally millions of dollars of his own money. And when it did come out, it more than made that money back. I think that was unexpected. For all there's supposed to be that huge Christian market, the people who will boycott Disney for giving their employees partner benefits, I don't think most Americans are too all-fired interested in watching movies about preachers. Certainly they don't want to watch films about preachers who are human. This is probably more to do with why it didn't get funding than some desperate fear of Christian themes. It's clear that "the Apostle E.F." really believes what he's saying. He believes he has atoned for his foul acts, but the fact is, he still goes out to dinner with Miranda Richardson, each sort of half-pretending that dinner date can go anywhere. And, of course, he does not face the laws of man. He's a flawed character--he did use that baseball bat in the first place.

Apparently, few of the cast members were actual professional actors. Oh, you've got your Billy Bob Thornton, your Miranda Richardson--of the four actors anyone's heard of for acting, you've got three Oscar nominees and an Oscar winner. (For acting. Billy Bob Thornton won for writing for [i]Sling Blade[/i].) You've also got June Carter Cash, not best known for her acting--though, of course, Reese Witherspoon won for playing her. That counts for something, I guess. Various of the other cast members have maybe a half-dozen credits, but a lot of them are real preachers or what have you, and the radio host, Elmo (Rick Dial), owns a furniture store and had the filming schedule worked around his obligations there. Once these people relaxed enough to ignore the cameras, they were really only playing themselves. A lot of cast members are credited as "Brother X," "Reverend Y," or, yes, "Apostle Z.".

The preaching, honestly, does make the movie run a little long. It's over two hours, and Robert Duvall spends about a quarter of the run time haranguing people about Jesus and salvation. Which is great for people inclined to listen to it, and even those who are not can acknowledge that he does a great job at it. On the other hand, you know, we get the point. He's a brilliant, charismatic preacher who can land on his feet just about anywhere by the strength of his words and his faith in Jesus. He inspires great devotion in his followers. Yes. All right. (The credits cookie actually makes me angry about his preaching, but never mind.) I guess it's even theoretically possible that Robert Duvall won some converts to the Lord, whether that was his intention or not. (He's a die-hard Republican.) It's just that, for those of us who don't agree with the religion, it can be a little much to take. Distant cousins we may be, but I don't always listen to my closer family when they talk that much about subjects which don't interest me.