Duvall's Gospel
A passionate performance by an actor, writer and director who creates an important and original piece of Americana.

THE APOSTLE
With Robert Duvall, Farrah Fawcett, Miranda Richardson
Written and Directed By Robert Duvall

THE APOSTLE OPENS in 1939, in a shotgun shack of a church in New Boston, Texas--population not very many, and almost all of them, on this particular Sunday morning, praising Jesus with nuclear fervor.

Most of the worshipers are black, including the large woman holding the small hand of Sonny Dewey, a white boy, who seems distracted during the joyful noise. He looks away, rests his face on his hands, sits impassively while his guardian waves a fan in front of his face, salvaging him from the heat.

But Sonny has Jesus in his bones. At 12, he becomes a Pentecostal preacher, stomping and shouting his ferocious hosannas in front of a black congregation. Almost half a century later, he has a big church of his own in suburban Ft. Worth, along with a beautiful wife, two children, a thriving ministry and a loyal following.

What happens after that to Sonny (Robert Duvall) makes up most of The Apostle, a rare and absorbing movie about a seldom-seen America. Packed with spellbinding scene after scene, it almost makes you forget that someone actually wrote and directed it, and that the people you see on the screen (or most of them anyway) are merely actors playing roles. If writer/director/star Duvall doesn't quite give us enough to understand his fascinating creation, then at least he takes us to an extraordinary place, this backwater America where people talk about Jesus as if he lived in the house next door.

There isn't a dull character in The Apostle, from Sonny's aging mother (June Carter Cash), who doesn't seem to know what to make of him, to the people he meets in rural Louisiana, where he begins a small country church of his own in a dilapidated building. Sam, a guileless young mechanic, becomes sweetly enamored of Sonny. Rev. Blackwell, a retired minister, takes a liking to his spiritual ebullience. Toosie (Miranda Richardson), whose marriage broke up and whose children now live upstate with her mother, goes out on some dates with him.

Most challenging of all is a troublemaker (Billy Bob Thornton) who resents a white preacher leading a black congregation. So when he arrives one Sunday with a bulldozer, ready to destroy the newly remodeled One Way Road to Heaven Church in front of everyone, Sonny brings him to tears using Jesus and a bible.

The Apostle is as much about culture, race and backwoods religion as it is about the sin and redemption of a fallible man. And how could we understand a man like this anyway? He shouts about Jesus like he means it and has intimate late-night talks with God. He cheats on his wife (Farrah Fawcett), tries to drag her away by her hair, and kills her lover with a baseball bat. (She, too, lives with Jesus, though she still commits adultery with a young pastor.)

Then Sonny repents: He baptizes himself, takes the name The Apostle E.F. (he never says what it stands for), flees Texas, and lands in Louisiana, where he works hard, turns people to Jesus, and gives food to the needy. He boasts that he can "preach on anything," from the Old Testament to Revelations, and he especially knows the Devil "backwards and forwards."

Sonny isn't a hustler like Elmer Gantry, Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart. He's an American archetype, a character who exists in a place so far removed from the America most of us know that it's hard to believe we can even call it part of the same country. But is it the Holy Spirit that moves him? Is it self-deification and inner longing? "We made news in Heaven this morning!" he declares after he comforts the dying victim of a four-car pileup. His righteousness follows him everywhere, even when he's terrorizing his wife and beating the man she slept with. After a rousing revival, he tells his clan, "Let's give a big hand clap for Jesus," as if Jesus is right there to take a bow.

More than putting religious faith on display--the preaching scenes in The Apostle are often moving, but also oddly disturbing in their frenzy--Duvall presents a rarefied slice of life. He gets so wrapped up in his characters and milieu that he can only bring his story to a somewhat contrived last act. But that doesn't matter too much, for The Apostle is a movie of people, places and moments, all revolving around a passionate performance by an actor, writer and director who creates an important and original piece of Americana.