| B- |
|---|
The direction was bad. I think Duvall, as an actor, had too much confidence in his actors' ability to express thoughts through a look on their faces. Thus you ended up with these lingering shots of people just thinking or experiencing something. I suspect this had more to do with a need to share the camera since this became an increasingly one-man show. In the end, I think this wasn't so much a movie as a documentary of Duvall's research into preaching, and it was good just for that. Though he pretty much played his typical character for most of the movie, when he was preaching he became an entirely different person and you forgot this was even the same person. Sort of like Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump when I sat through the whole movie and never thought once that that was Tom Hanks.
Can't give this more than a 7 out of 10.
RM>>I'm curious, do you think Duval, who wrote and directed this picture, was dipicting this man as a "hypocritical hideous individual?" Because, while on some level he was "hypocritical" I don't think that's what Duval was going for. I think he was trying to show us the sincerity and realness of people like E.F.<<
I don't think he was hideous or terribly hypocritical. I think he was human and had flaws. But I also understood that the character had a real calling. That he was energized by preaching. That's what he was put on the planet to do and that's what he was going to do no matter what else was going on in his life. E.F. was like a professional athlete. He was great at his job, but that expertise doesn't necessarily carry over into the rest of his life.
••••• warning.... 'possible spoiler' (well, sort of) below •••••••••••• Spoilers . . .
MD>>I was a bit perplexed by Billy Bob. For one, I don't think this character (or anyone of his ilk) shows up with a bulldozer right when this big service is taking place on a Sunday. This type of individual would be more likely to knock down the church or torch it when no one else was around. However, the way the scene plays out was one of the Duval characters' triumphs... the way he stood up for what he believed in, got those in the crowd behind him, defied the odds and used his power of persuasion to avert a tragedy. To me, this scene and some others like it were the high points of the movie.<<
I was trying to figure out the Billy Bob scene too. My girlfriend said she thought maybe Billy Bob read Duvall's script and then asked if he could add this part to it. Though it was a good scene, it didn't seem to have much to do with the rest of the movie and Billy Bob wasn't in the church at the end.
I agree that if you were going to knock down a church you'd do it when no one was there, but maybe Billy Bob wasn't that smart or was too impulsive to wait. Or maybe he really wanted to be talked out of it.
As long as we're talking about the end, what was the deal with all the drama around the skinny guy at the end? I was thinking maybe he would take over for Duvall, but there certainly didn't seem to be anything to hint at that?