The legendary actor Robert Duvall passed away on his farm in Middleburg, Virginia, on February 15 at the age of 95.
One of the last stars of the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’, Duvall leaves behind a legacy of outstanding performances after a gargantuan film career.
Best known for his role as the surf-obsessed Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now or as Tom Hagen in The Godfather, the acclaimed actor was the recipient of countless awards across his career, including seven Oscar nominations across five decades.
Oddly enough, his most acclaimed performance came from an unexpected, oft-forgotten place.
Film News Blitz’s Freddie Thomas-Neher takes a look at his single Oscar-winning role.
‘Tender Mercies’ – Robert Duvall at his brilliant best
Tender Mercies is a 1983 drama, directed by Bruce Beresford and starring Duvall as a washed-up country singer, bereft of his family and finding work at a gas station.
Mac Sledge, Duvall’s character in the film, is not an easy man.
Texas, Americana and fatherhood
His career’s capitulation and the end of his relationship with his wife and daughter came as a result of his alcoholism; once a country star, which his ex-wife remains now stuck in the back end of rural Texas.
What follows is a masterful depiction of a man, stubborn by his own admission, grappling with the worst realities of his existence and battling to forge a relationship with his now-adult daughter.
Sledge marries the gas station owner, who is widowed from the Vietnam War with a son, and as the film progresses, Duvall expertly portrays the delicate nature of a late-century Southerner out of time and mind.
Set to the backdrop of a classic Texan landscape, Sledge’s journey is one of self-discovery, a tough relationship with fatherhood, with a raw, unflinching showing from Duvall at the height of the film’s emotion.
Country music and a faded star
One of the defining moments of the film is when Duvall’s Sledge is told by his former manager, played by Wilford Brimley, that a new song of his is ‘no good’ and the country music business has changed.
Sledge goes home, claims it was an old song, and, amidst a theme of him teaching guitar to his adopted son, breaks down in anger, admitting with an almost childlike pettiness that he lied: it was indeed a new offering.
His struggle with alcoholism takes the stage as he fights with the truth of the matter: is he simply just washed up?
The question is one of many meticulously crafted by the film and expertly presented by the performance of the late American actor.
Harsh realities
By no metric is the film an easy watch; its ever-sunny Texan backdrop is consistently punctured by the real-world struggles that Sledge endures, some his own fault and some, tragically, not.
Tender Mercies serves as a reminder of just how good the late actor really was.
It is Duvall at his most personal, and he brings a mammoth showing to stake his claim as an all-time great.
Amidst a career studded with stellar performances, Duvall’s lone nod from the Academy stands alone; a deeply affecting character study of a struggling, flawed man who doesn’t and can’t trust a good run of luck.
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