The Apostle
Writer, director, executive producer, actor Robert Duvall
Most independent films require an act of faith, someone who's willing to believe in it and bring crucial financing to the project. In the thirteen years between when Robert Duvall first wrote the script and when he was finally able to direct and star in The Apostle (1997), he found few believers.
Long regarded as one of America's finest actors, Duvall isn't considered one of "those top top top guys," as he calls them, movie stars with enough clout to get their films made. Finally, he was advised by an unlikely source to finance the $5 million project himself.
"It made me feel good that my CPA would say that, because he's a real conservative, plays everything close to the vest," says Robert Duvall in Los Angeles, "so I say he green lit the movie, nobody else helped me."
Duvall had also financed the two previous low-budget films he directed, the documentary We're Not the Jet Set (1975), about a Nebraska rodeo family, and the gritty, cinéma vérité-style Angelo, My Love (1983), about a Romany gypsy boy in contemporary New York City. But Duvall believes financing for his third film wasn't forthcoming from traditional sources because of its subject matter.
The Apostle chronicles the downfall of troubled Pentecostal preacher, Euliss "Sonny" Dewey, who returns to the roots of his faith and finds redemption. Sonny may be an immensely flawed individual — a philandering, heavy-drinking, and in one instance, brutally violent man — but his devotion to God and his dedication to his congregation, which he built from the ground up, are never in question. Preaching is his life's blood.
In an early scene, at the site of a car accident on a rural highway, Sonny sneaks past State Troopers to the car of a dazed and bloody young couple and begins preaching to them to accept Jesus. This unnerving encounter — visceral in its immediacy and squirm-inducing in its assertiveness — sets the tone of the film. "He's very sincere," says Duvall of Sonny's faith.
"I knew somebody whose mother was a preacher," he continues, "and she'd go right to a wreck and preach the stoppage of blood from Ezekiel. I'd heard of that, so I wanted to get that sense that [Sonny] likes to do good, that he's always believed that he'd been called to preach. I didn't want any kind of indictment, I didn't want an easy hook, a way out to make a comment on a guy like this."
Sonny — who during the film does a self-baptism and rechristens himself the Apostle E.F. — is a direct challenge to the Elmer Gantry-like hypocritical preacher, a stereotype that Duvall has seen portrayed numerous times.
"I think the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant gets it more heat-wise, critical-wise, but it's all the same in a way whether you agree or not," he says. "In many ways, the Protestants — not that I agree with everything — the Protestant Right, the Roman Catholics, there's no difference between those guys and an archbishop or a rabbi in a synagogue, they all believe in certain family values."
Much of The Apostle, including the intense preaching scenes, came from Duvall's extensive visits to evangelical congregations around the country. This research period, combined with his own church-going Protestant upbringing, convinced him that there was a segment of the population who weren't being represented accurately onscreen.
"If there wasn't this whole Christian movement in the United States," he explains, "I would have made no movie, and, therefore, as much as I could, I tried to turn it around and let it come from them."
This led Duvall to cast non-actors in many of the pivotal roles, providing The Apostle with the earthiness of grass roots faith, as opposed to the "spiritual theater" of televised Christianity. And, in many ways, Sonny exemplifies the dedication and exhaustive work ethic of Robert Duvall's career.
Known for his intensive research and the methodical paring down of a character to the bare essentials, in person, the 66-year-old Duvall exudes a combination of the quiet thoughtfulness of his humbled country singer from 1983's Tender Mercies (an Oscar-winning role written by his friend and frequent collaborator, playwright Horton Foote) while also maintaining the carriage and innate confidence of the rigid career Marine from The Great Santini (1979).
Sonny "certainly made me aware of certain things," Duvall says, "like I always say, we all have an individual journey from the cradle to the grave, and what we can do during that time without hurting too many people and maybe making a contribution."
"It's enriched my journey," concludes Robert Duvall about his experiences — spiritual and otherwise — making The Apostle, "made me think about things, made me think about the hereafter. I think that's kind of an underlying theme of the movie: What's next?"
© 1997, Serena Donadoni. All rights reserved.