Robert Duvall, Today

A Passing Visit With a Legend

I think I show my age when I make comment about Robert Duvall and I have to say who he is by the performance he gave in Secondhand Lions. The hallmark type of feel good movie is a staple on network television for repeat viewing. The film is enjoyable enough to have been watched by most people at one point or another and if someone hasn’t seen it, they at least know the film. Easy translation of enjoyable movies is common. If this was 15 years ago and TBS was replaying movies the way they do, we may be talking about Robert Duvall’s lovable performance in Wrestling Ernest Hemingway. Duvall is my favorite actor and if anyone can do it, I hope they check out that little early 1990s film with Duvall as a Cuban immigrant and Sandra Bullock as an underwhelmed waitress. It’s much better than Secondhand Lions and as good as candy. However, only visible on THIS network every great while.

Of course, the problem today is Duvall is becoming known more these shallow end roles. For me, they give roundness to his career and endear you to him on other levels. Kevin Bacon is an unrecognized actor as far as large commentary goes, but his ability to fill many kind of roles is amazing. The fact he can inhabit realism with roles in JFK and The Woodsman while easily being able to slide into comedy and action roles is the ultimate compliment because it shows elasticity. Some of the more recognizable dramatic actors avoid other genres of work, but Duvall and Bacon have made many kind of roles home to their personality.

I think this is a trait within an actor which should get more compliments but Laurence Olivier said it best by saying an actor is considered the greatest because of the level of roles they take on. Film is more media conscious and perception based than any other developed art form. Unsubstantiated gravitas is in every art, but the commercial element makes it a particular animal in film. Duvall is able to take on commandeering roles which rise to levels of Shakespeare as far as deft goes, but Duvall considers himself a team player in film production work. It isn’t a late development either. Sometimes as careers rise and fall and actors become more accepting of supporting roles. Duvall has always been to coast as a player in the background. The sad thing is that his window for great roles is disappearing. An experienced Shakespeare actor like Al Pacino finally sees himself as able to take on a role as lofty as King Lear (if his planned film adaptation goes through), but when I talk to a Shakespeare professor, he believes Pacino is still too young for the role. However, Duvall, now 79, is the perfect age for King Lear. The problem is he likely won’t take on the role.

The other problem is that Lear is the oldest great Shakespeare role to do. After that, there is nothing. Of course other works and writers exist, but you start playing with a small deck of cards when you have to look at the roles and see if it aligns with the age of Shakespeare’s Lear. When Assassination Tango was released in 2002, a critic commented on whether Robert Duvall would take on a role like Lear because his talent commanded it. There was a disappointed tone of “probably not” since the feeling around Tango is that it was beneath his talent to even take time to do. Since that film, other movies like Four Christmases, We Own the Night, Lucky You, and Kicking and Screaming, have occupied Duvall’s time. None of the films featured worthy roles for Duvall. I have followed Duvall’s career from the 1970s and his current crop of character roles just doesn’t hold much interest with me.

As a character actor coming into prominence in the 1970s and 80s, he was able to maintain a diverse approach because of the acclaim of the Godfather roles and how the films gave him a chance to take on different kinds of roles. Duvall stretched out the wool of every kind of character. Along the way, naturally, certain kind of roles became more home to him than others. During the 2000’s, familiarity turned into the touchstone of his better performances. It seems like an ignorant statement to make, but Duvall’s familiarity felt the only intrinsic welcome since Duvall was doing little find roles of suitable depth. Performances in A Shot of Glory was interesting due to seeing an American actor be automatically accepted to play a Scottish character. However, His role as General Robert E. Lee in Gods and Generals was his only role as high challenge. General Lee is an ancestor of Duvall’s so he saw the role as a personal challenge and an honor to his ancestry.

For Duvall, the big release this year is Get Low. I haven’t seen the film but it is getting good reviews as a quirky look at an aging elder’s request to have his funeral before his death. In the story, townspeople not only show disfavor to the idea because of its oddness, but also due to unseemly legends the character doing it has made for himself. The story looks like a “coming to terms” story for everyone involved. It’s funny because the architecture of this piece is that Duvall is honoring his retirement before it has even come to him. I hope to watch the film and feel new sensations of the ability of Duvall to seize depths of emotion he is capable of doing, but I also have to honor the notion that Paul Newman attested to when he announced his retirement from acting: it becomes hard to keep up the concentration requirements. Duvall would only be human to start feeling the same fatigue. Still, one can not help but wish he felt the burning of his age a little closer and willed the performances in the roles he was capable of doing. I also hope the blog honors the better parts of his career with more thoughtful and considerate reviews of the moments in which he was truly defining his characters .