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Tim Cawkwell

~ currently publishing my poetry and verse. Blog entries on film and painting going back to 2014. My main website is www.timcawkwell.co.uk

Tim Cawkwell

Category Archives: revivalism

enter The Apostle . . . shouting

03 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by Tim Cawkwell in revivalism

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revivalism, Robert Duvall, The Apostle

From pages 92-3 of THE NEW FILMGOER’S GUIDE TO GOD:

“Robert Duvall’s film The Apostle (1997) mines the idea of revivalist shouting to the full. Right at the beginning it shows Sonny Dewey as a young white boy listening to a black revivalist preacher. The child is father of the man: Sonny devotes his life to ministry in the proper style, which accepts no authority but that of God as it is expressed in scripture. Made at the end of the twentieth century, The Apostle is a valuable depiction of contemporary religion in a corner of America. Yet it is also a critique of that religion: Sonny’s religious convictions come from a character in which inner human complexity and outward certainty struggle in tension with each other. He seems to be in total control but the narrative hinges on a moment when he loses self-control.

The Apostle

“Sonny strides through the film like a colossal monster. The whole focus is on him so that while the rest of the cast is well drawn, they are slightly pale by comparison. Jesse is frightened of him; Horace is just a ‘puny-arsed Youth Minister’; Brother Blackwell’s ministry has been defeated by two heart attacks; Sonny’s loyal friend Joe is in awe of him; Toosie, the woman whom Sonny courts in Bayou Boutté, is coy and uncommitted. The only comparable figures are the black preachers from whom Sonny has learnt how to shout. When Blackwell offers him his old church, now a shack in a field, Sonny comments ‘I could do some shouting in here’. His approach to radio preaching is to tell people that the eleventh commandment ‘Thou shalt not shout’ does not exist.”

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Recent Posts

  • RICH MAN, POOR MAN, DEAD MAN – a Covid ode
  • VERSE EPISTLE TO Mr DOMINIC CUMMINGS . . .
  • EMPIRE – WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
  • yearning for the sixties
  • FILM PORTRAITURE 4: Bob Fleischner Dying

Recent Comments

Sarah Cawkwell on FILM PORTRAITS 2: TACITA …
Antonioni: more De C… on Antonioni’s Metaphysical…
Tim Cawkwell on Ferrara made me (1): Anto…
Donato Totaro on Ferrara made me (1): Anto…
Tim Cawkwell on Ferrara made me (1): Anto…

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Categories

  • Antonioni
  • artists' film
  • avant garde
  • Bible on film
  • biopics
  • Brakhage
  • Bresson
  • British cinema
  • cinema and culture
  • cinema of hyperbole
  • costume narratives
  • courtroom dramas
  • Creation
  • crucifixion films
  • crucifixion on film
  • diary films
  • disaster movies
  • documentaries
  • Doubt
  • film noir
  • film portraiture
  • gangster films
  • God
  • Hitchcock
  • humanism
  • Ireland
  • Italian gardens
  • Italy
  • John Ford
  • Kieslowski reflection
  • Kieslowski reflections
  • literature and film
  • metaphysical film
  • monastery films
  • Nativity
  • nuns on film
  • opera and film
  • painting and photography
  • Pascalian cinema
  • Pasolini
  • poetry & verse
  • Polish history
  • predestination
  • redemption
  • resurrection
  • revivalism
  • Rohmer
  • Russian cinema
  • self-publishing
  • sewer films
  • silent cinema
  • spiritual cinema
  • surrealism
  • talkies
  • Tim's poems 2020
  • time puzzles
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  • Uncategorized
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