After a bit of a break, we are back with our penultimate choices for the “Most Spiritually Significant Films of all time.”
Our choices?
Me: Robert Duvall’s (in every sense) The Apostle
Chris: The Coen brothers’ A Serious Man.
A bit more on The Apostle – I offer background in the podcast, but here are a few links that might interest you.
You can read Duvall’s script here. It’s pretty close to what made it onscreen.
There are many good interviews with Duvall on the film – here’s one.
Duvall (who is still alive, btw) made another spiritually significant film, which I did consider for my list – Tender Mercies. I wrote about it here, and yes, you should watch it. Watch them both!
As I mention in the podcast, my backgrounder on The Apostle was much simpler than it had been for my previous choice, On The Waterfront, which had to take in Elia Kazan, Budd Schulberg, Marlon Brando, the Actors’ Studio and the priest on which Karl Malden’s character was based, Father John Corridan. This time it was just Duvall, who conceived the project, nurtured it over decades, wrote the script, directed and starred in it. But you should still go back and learn about Fr. Corridan at least – here’s my blog post on that.
