February 12–19, 1998

movie shorts

The Apostle

Robert Duvall served as writer, director, producer, star and primary investor, so it's fair to call The Apostle a labor of love. But love is blind, and it's hard to make a movie if you can't see straight. Adopting a pseudo-documentary style and casting amateur actors in all but the largest roles, Duvall the writer-director abandons conventional plot in favor of a character-centered approach, leaving Duvall the actor to gesticulate wildly in a vacuum. About twenty minutes into The Apostle you realize that nothing has actually happened yet, and that sets the pace for the rest of the movie. Duvall begins the Apostle as a fire-breathing Texas preacher whose personal behavior doesn't match the standards he sets in church. After his wife (Farrah Fawcett) divorces him and seizes control of his church, he kills her lover with a baseball bat, flees, and rechristens himself the Apostle E.F. Settling in a small Bayou town, the Apostle starts up a small church, preaching in a wild Pentecostal style to a mostly black congregation. Like much of the Apostle, E.F.'s relationship to the black church is never explored beyond the surface, and without a deeper exploration of its central character, the film merely seems overwrought.

—Sam Adams