The Apostle

The Apostle hit close to home for me. I spent me teenage years attending churches in the holiness tradition. Since about my senior year of high school, I have grown increasingly skeptical of the emotional and spiritual experiences displayed in these Pentecostal churches. Because of my skepticism, I am glad I watched this film. Maybe somewhere along the journey I dismissed the possibility that God manifests Himself to different people in different ways. In some ways it is easy to dismiss Sonny (Robert Duvall). He is a flawed man. He is divorced, full of lust, and a murderer. However, it is also clear that his faith is enormous and despite his struggles he sees God perform miracles in his mist. Residing within him together with all his shortcomings, Sonny is full of love for God and for other people, especially those who do not yet know Jesus. The amazing accomplishment of this movie is that it shows you Christ in the form of a sinful man. And you can really see it. Over the film's 2 hours and 14 minutes, the audience's love and concern for Sonny grows increasingly stronger. He is a real person; the real Christian everyone wishes they knew because even though they know he is a sinner they also know that he really has a relationship with the God he speaks of. I'm glad I watched this movie. I hope that I am more tolerable to other Christian traditions. I hope that I am more loving and real with people. I hope that in the mist of adversity, in the darkest valley, I know who is with me at all times…Jesus.

Superior acting and a plot based on realism make this a classic movie of actual southern life ... a life that I experienced as a child and adolescent. Duvall's evangelist portrayal is not only convincing but eerie in the way it so fully represents many southern ministers of the gospel ... be they true believers or be they charlatans. I can't help but wonder if the cast was comprised of local folks ... or at least folks reared in the south ... rather than professional actors. They all did an excellent job contributing to the realism of this movie. I almost always enjoy a movie that "tells it like it is" ... and sofar, this is one of the most enjoyable I have ever seen.

In order to fully appreciate "The Apostle" it might help to have some experience with southern Pentecostal culture. I do, and was completely taken in by the film. My wife, on the other hand, doesn't have that experience and understands neither the film nor my fondness for it. But I think that, if one is not distracted or confused or simply put off by the loud, emotional, sometimes corny religiosity portrayed here, one can see a strong, compelling story of a seriously, ultimately fatally flawed man whose faith in God and in God's mission for him reaches to his very core.

On the surface, one can view Sonny Dewey as just another example of a certain type of religious fraud: the backslapping, perpetually-grinning, wisecracking good old boy who uses religion and exploits his flock for his own selfish ends. He looks like someone who doesn't practice what he preaches. He womanizes, he's not above taking a snort from this pocket flask, he has a troubled marriage and we get the hint that he is the source of more than his share of the trouble, even to the extent of driving his wife into the arms of another man. He seems to be just another Elmer Gantry or, to pick from the real world, he's just like one of the fallen televangelists of recent years. But just when you're comfortable with that judgment of him, Sonny proves you wrong. He admits to his faults, some more freely than others. But he makes no excuses for them and, in the end, he knows that he is going to pay for them.

What really draws me into the film, and what really makes Sonny interesting for me, is the way Duvall has made him such a complex character. He's a bad guy and a good guy. He is darkness and he is light. He is sometimes endearing and other times someone you really don't feel comfortable trusting. But by creating this ambiguity, Duvall does a service not only to the way religious leaders are characterized in film, he also pays homage to core religious issues. By diving into the murky waters of Sonny's soul, Duvall goes into territory known to any seriously religious person. As much as you might want things to be black and white, a good portion of the time you're being pulled back into the shadows: there are good intentions and evil deeds; there are selfless aspirations and appetites to be fed. Sometimes you swing wildly from one side to the other. Sometimes you are on an even keel. Sometimes you're not sure.

Faith and work determine how such a struggle will turn out. Sonny is energized by both. He believes in what he is doing. He believes that God has given him a mission and he is determined to accomplish it, even in spite of himself. While it might be tempting to make a stark contrast between the message Sonny preaches and the actions he has done that are contrary to it, one must always remember that a good preacher always preaches to himself as well as his congregation. But some of the more revealing moments of the film are not when Sonny is in front of a congregation, or even with other people generally, but when he is alone with God: ranting at God in anger; dedicating himself to God in the moment that he becomes the Apostle; the soul-searching moments when he forgives his wife and resigns himself to his fate.

The no-punches-pulled realness of Sonny's struggle is a refreshing departure from the usual film portrayals of religious figures: plaster saint, con-man, one-dimensional milquetoast. But it also brings to the forefront the question of whether Sonny, or any of us, can be used for divine purpose.

"The Apostle" is beautifully filmed and captures well a portion of the rural South: you can almost feel the humidity and smell the swampwater. And while the well-known actors in the film (Farrah Fawcett, Billy Bob Thornton, Miranda Richardson) all turn in fine performances, it is the unknowns --the church members and townfolk -- that really give the film an added authenticity.

My husband and I have loved this movie since we saw it the first four or five times. After recently buying a DVD and getting The Apostle in DVD we found a new since of excitement. The director's insights given have enriched the movie and given it deeper personality. Here is a few thoughts to help capture this wonderful creation

Eulis `Sonny' Dewey is a Southern Pentecostal Holiness Evangelist and Preacher from Texas living a seemingly happy life with his wife Jessie and his two `beauties' (children). Suddenly his flashy, hyped world comes apart: Jessie is having an affair with youth minister Horace. Sonny gets drunk, enraged and hits Horace with a baseball bat, putting him into a coma in which he later dies. Sonny escapes town, takes a new name, `The Apostle E.F.', and goes to Louisiana. He starts to work as a mechanic for local radio station owner, Elmo, and Elmo lets him preach on the radio. E.F. starts to preach everywhere: on the radio, on the streets, and with his new friend, Reverend Blackwell, he starts a campaign to renovate an old church. Along the way he wants to have an affair with Elmo's secretary `Toosie,' and all the time he is preaching, he knows his time is running out. His past sins are catching up with him and so is the law.

The character of Sonny is developed in every scene. Each scene reveals another complex part of Sonny's character. One scene will show his humility and the next shows his pride. These contradictions of, sanctification versus earthiness, generosity versus possessiveness, and open affability versus anger are developed to show the complexity in Sonny's character. Robert Duvall's sense of evil is simple and forgiving (things most all people deal with). Robert Duvall constantly explores how good a human can be and how much good he can do when `sold out' to God. His personal communication scenes with Jesus make his character seem vulnerable, open, and honest.

The Apostle is set in a Southern, God Fearing, Right Wing, Conservative, setting. Even though Sonny has had a `womanizing' problem in the past, the morality is certainly conveyed as an absolute and conservative religious morality. This is a community of a small group that belongs to Jesus and Sonny's `little church'. Since the Southern Pentecostal Church, containing both Blacks and Whites together is, not a stereotype, The Apostle is developing new territory in genre definition. The ideas of feminism or gay liberation are hardly understood in this rural religious Southern setting. Morality and fidelity are high on their social standards. However, overeating and gluttony are accepted weaknesses. Getting drunk is one weakness that most of the men have had in their younger rebellious days.

The charismatic, convincing, conniving, and calculating Sonny describes a most entertaining and flawed `Man of God'. The theme of an uneasy co-existence of the holy part of Sonny, with his flesh, is brought to film for the first time. The protagonist Sonny is the most authentic portrayal of a Southern Pentecostal Holiness Evangelist/Preacher with almost every other word being, `Praise the Lord,' `Hallelujah', `Amen,' `Thank you, Jesus,' which all come from his heart.

The other (earthly) side of Sonny is aptly convincing. Earthy examples are: his description of his womanizing to his wife, his drunken fight, (where he strikes his wife's lover with a baseball bat), and his cruelly dragging his wife off the ball field by her hair, and showing his obvious drunkenness, anger and cruelty when he blew up. Another subtle example is when he is doing his charismatic preaching on the radio, while the secretary is watching his intensity, and he follows it by preaching to her, (meanwhile, there is this calculating sales pitch with sexual sub-text between the two people).

A subtle but revealing example of Sonny's character is shown by Duvall's acting in two `sales-like, asking for the order' scenes. The first scene takes place where Sonny and the secretary have had several encounters and Sonny is trying to get into her life, house, and bedroom. After a couple of hot intense smothering kisses, Sonny keeps saying, `Come on now,' for his closing `pitch', to which she keeps answering, `Next time'. The other is in the closing scenes of the movie inside the `One Way Road to Heaven' church. Sonny and members are having an `altar call', and have been singing, `Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling', and as a final plea to a parishioner to accept Jesus into his life, Sonny keeps using his sales phrase `Come on now!' Even though the words are previously used for his earthly desires, in this scene he captures his passion to perfection and his tears are genuine as he pleads with all his heart.

In my mind, I can describe Robert Duvall's Academy Award deserving character acting as a poignant, perplexing, portrayal of a paradoxical, problematic, passionate, preacher. Even though I could also choose Jack Nicholson's role in `As Good As It Gets'(who won the Oscar), the depth and breadth of Nicholson's acting don't measure up to the job done by probably America's greatest actor, Robert Duvall. I believe this technique of documentary style filmmaking places the burden of carrying the movie on the acting and solely on Robert Duvall's Academy Award winning shoulders, and he delivers

I didn't grow up down South, or even in the midwest, but I do know a little bit about the Pentacostal Church and Christian fundamentalism. Robert Duvall is an ambitious actor and film maker, and The Apostle hits home with its perceptive and loving portrayal of country people in the United States. It is refreshing to see that culture portrayed as something other than gaggles of yahoos. The Apostle focuses on the community spirit of the church, and thereby shatters some of the mystery of its appeal in a culture as self-centered as our own. There are no saints in this story, just a protagonist and his supporters trying to make sense of a country in which there is little love and way too much usury. The film is harsh on a number of levels, very no-nonsense though drawn out at various moments. But it's real, and that's more than can be said for ninety per cent of what passes for films about U.S. culture these days. It's said by some folks that Robert Duvall has been trying to make this film for a lot of years, and there are parts of The Apostle that contain faint echoes of his 1983 project Tender Mercies. It hardly matters, since both are interesting films for different reasons. Some day we'll see Robert Duvall as the vast repository of Americana he really is, until then, The Apostle is one of the best testimonies to his strengths that I know of. Can I get a witness?