Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1997

The Contenders:

Robert Duvall: The Apostle
Jack Nicholson: As Good as it Gets (winner)
Matt Damon: Good Will Hunting
Peter Fonda: Ulee’s Gold
Dustin Hoffman: Wag the Dog

The Apostle

Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Today was “Ask an Atheist Day” according to the Secular Student Alliance. Based on the way this made my Facebook status blow up, there are evidently a ton of questions out there regarding a lack of faith, although in my case it’s more appropriate to say that there was one person with a laundry list of questions that never seemed to stop coming. I thought it would be appropriate to watch a film with a number of theological overtones and undertones today, which led me to The Apostle, which is currently streaming on NetFlix. This is a film I’d seen before, but it’s also been some time since I’ve rewatched something.

In a purely cinematic sense, when it comes to this film you need to ask yourself one question: How do you approach a film that contains the single greatest performance of one the greatest actors of his generation? Robert Duvall is one of the great actors of his or any generation. I feel I can say that without much debate. And The Apostle is his greatest piece of acting. This is a guy with a half dozen Oscar nominations and a statute, a man who held his own with John Wayne and Marlon Brando, and in a career that has spanned decades, he was never better than in the just-over two hours of The Apostle. Disagree if you like, but you’re wrong.