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FIRST TH ING SMy Easters With Robert DuvallDimitri CavalliApril 4, 2010W e all have our holiday traditions whether it's watching college football andhaving a big dinner with the fam ily on Th anksgiving or M idnight Mass onChristma s and opening presents afterward. On Easter Sunday, I spendm ost of the day w ith m y fam ily. Som etim e in the late evening hours,however, I also spend some time w ith actor R obert Duvall. To be hon est, Ihave never met him. I just watch Duvall in a little film he m ade, TenderMercies (1983). This is the film that earned Duvall, who previously earnedOscar nom inations for his work in such w ell-known films as The Godfather(1972), Apocalypse Now (1979), and The Great Santini (1979), his onlyAcadem y Aw ard for Best Actor.In 1983, Tender Mercies was released in a handful of theaters. It didn'tma ke m uch m oney at first. Ho wever, the critics who saw it gave TenderMercies enthusiastic reviews. The film w ent on to receive five Academ yAw ard nom inations, winning two: best actor for Du vall and best originalscreenplay for Horton Foote, who d ied last year. Tender Mercies eventuallygrossed over $8 million at the box office (a respectable showing for a low-budget film in limited release). It also received high ratings on cabletelevision and becam e a popular rental on V HS .Despite all the attention Tender Mercies received, I m issed it. Th e Bronx ,New York, w here I grew up and still live, didn't get cable until 1990. M y pre-Blockbuster, local video store may have carried it, but I probablyoverlooked it in the dram a and n ew releases section. Even if I did see theVHS box for Tender Mercies on the store's racks, I don't think I would haverented it since as a young teenager, I naturally preferred action films,comedies, and science fiction.

Although m y interests in film g radually broadened since then, TenderMercies continued to pass m e by. As a you ng adult, I learned abou t the film

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I finally saw Tender Mercies on one of the most important dates on theChristian calendar and during an important transition period in my life. OnEaster Sunday, April 23, 2000, a Long Island T V-station that my cab lesystem gets aired Tender Mercies in the late afternoon .That particular Easter was quite meaningful for me. The very next day, Istarted a full-tim e writing job with a small publishing com pany. I hadwan ted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to get started. The job I hadjust left was with a security com pany as an alarm dispatcher. I took it theprevious year because I couldn't get a job with either a magazine or apublishing company and needed something to pay bills in the meantime. Ialso tried freelance writing, but I got nothing bu t rejection notices(including from this magazine).At the security job, I worked midnight to 8 AM on W . 47th Street inM anhattan's Diamon d D istrict. The b lock where I worked can be seen in theDustin Hoffman film, The Marathon Man (1976), where an elderlyHolocaust survivor pursues the Nazi war criminal (Laurence O livier) sheremem bers from a death camp. To rebuild m y bank account and save upfor a new car, I worked a lot of overtime. W hen I got hom e in the m ornings,I slept only five or six hours (and m uch less when I w orked do uble shifts). Iate once or twice a day and ended up losing about 3o pounds in the iim onths I worked there. The job left m e physically and emotionallyexhausted. I was grateful when m y prayers were answered, and when Ifinally go t m y first, full-time w riting job.So on E aster Sunday in 2000, still tired from m y last job but filled w ithhope that I wou ld be starting m y new writing job the next day, I watchedTender Mercies. M y choice to watch it wasn't preplanned. It just happenedto be conveniently on when I had som e free time. I enjoyed the film an dfound, in some wa ys, that it deeply resonated with wh at was going on m yown life back then. Since 2000, I made watching Tender Mercies on E asterSund ay a personal tradition.Tender Mercies is not explicitly about Easter. Its themes of redemption,forgiveness, hope, and personal transformation through religious faith,how ever, reflect what Easter represents. It seemed so appropriate that it

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Tender Mercies is about a man nam ed Mac Sledge (Duvall). When w e firstsee M ac in the opening scene, he has literally hit rock bottom. M ac is lyingunconscious on the dirty floor of a motel room on some remote Texashighway. The night before, he lost a fight with his traveling com panion overa bottle of alcohol. His com panion left M ac behind and stuck him with thebill.M ac was once a popular country m usic singer and talented songwriter.Years perhaps decades of alcohol abuse destroyed his life, career, andmarriage. Mac, who once had fame and fortune, now has nothing. While heis washed up, M ac's ex-wife, Dixie Scott (Betty Buck ley), is at the height ofher own popularity as a country music star. Mac used to physically abuseDixie and even tried to kill her once during a drunken rage.The m otel where Mac finds himself is owned by Rosa L ee (Tess Harper), ayoung, pretty widow with a young son nicknamed Sonny (Allan Hubbard).Rosa Lee's husband w as killed in Vietnam. She remem bers that he was "justa boy" but "a good boy. I think he would have been a fine man."W ith no way to pay the bill, M ac swallows his pride and approaches RosaLee. "Lady, I'm broke," he says. "But I'll be glad to work out what I oweyou." She agrees but lays down one rule: no drinking while he works for her."Yes m a'am," he politely replies. Mac does some odd jobs around the motel.Although he w orks off his debt, Mac still has nowhere else to go. He asksRosa L ee if he can stay on and do m ore work for her. She agrees and giveshim room and board and $2 an hour (well below minimum wage at thetime.) Mac stays in a trailer.Rosa Lee sings with the choir at her Baptist church in town. Mac beginsaccomp anying Rosa Lee and Sonny to church. Although he has never beenbaptized, Mac has always been som ewhat religious. In the pew with Sonny,M ac sings "Jesus Saves" with enthusiasm.After several months of manual labor and going to church regularly, Macconcludes that his drinking is behind him. Rosa Lee observes: "I'm glad. Idon't think it gets you anywhere."

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her garden, he proposes to her. "Will you think about marrying me?" heasks. "Yeah , I will," she says. They even tually m arry (off-screen), and M acbecom es a stepfather to Sonny. A short time later, both M ac and So nny arebaptized on the same day as R osa Lee looks on from the choir. Wh iledriving hom e, Sonny says that he feels "a little different but not that m uchdifferent." He asks M ac if baptism has changed him. His "stepdaddy"replies, "Not yet."M ac finds a peace and happiness with Rosa Lee and Sonn y that he m ay nothave exp erienced in a long time (if at all). "Every night, when I say m yprayers, and I thank the Lord for his tender m ercies to m e, you and Sonnyhead the list," she tells him. Th eir life together isn't exactly perfect. Wo rdthat Mac is now married to Rosa L ee gradually spreads. A reporter trackshim dow n, eager to write a story about him, but Mac shun s him. Rosa Leesuspects that M ac m ay have still have feelings for Dixie because "she's richand fam ous," which he an grily denies.One day, Sue A nn (Ellen Barkin), M ac's i8-year-old d aughter from h ismarriage w ith D ixie, comes to visit him. M ac hasn't seen her in "seven oreight years." H e m ade a recent attempt to see her, but Dixie turned h imaway. Over the years, Mac tried to get in touch with her, but his ex-wifemad e sure Sue A nn didn't get his letters. Sue Ann is curious about herfather. "You don 't look like your pictures anymore," she says. Although M achasn't been a part of her life, he has m anaged to provide for her. Sue A nnexplains that the royalties from a ll the songs he w rote were p laced in a trustfund for her, and she can buy whatever she needs or wa nts. M ac remindsher that he may ha ve written the songs, but her mother is the one w ho sangthem and helped make them successful. Although Mac previously describedhis ex-wife as "absolutely poison" to him , he mak es no effort to turn SueAnn a gainst her.M ac gradu ally starts writing songs again. He isn't interested in regaininghis form er fame, but thinks any m oney he could m ake will help him supporthis new fam ily. Som e of his songs include, "The Rom ance Is Over," "IfYou'll Hold the Ladder, I'll Climb to the Top," and "G od C an Forgive Me,Why Can't You?"

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M ac and the band perform the song at a sm all venue. W hen M ac finishesthe song, the audience cheers and applauds him. Robert Duvall does hisown singing in Tender Mercies. If he didn't go into acting, he could havemade an excellent living as a singer.Just as things look really good for M ac, he is devastated to learn that SueAnn has been k illed in a car accident. After the funeral, he starts asking w hythings happen the way they do. Ma c recalls that he, while drunk, was nearlykilled in a car crash. He asks wh y Rosa L ee decided to pity him, a drunk ,take him in, and help straighten him out. Why was Sonny's father killed inVietnam? W hy was Sue Ann killed while he lived? "I prayed last night toknow why I lived and she died," he says. "I got no answer to m y prayers."W hen faced with tragedy and other setbacks, ma ny religious people haveasked similar questions. Like M ac, they don't have imm ediate answers.Choking back tears, Mac confesses to Rosa Lee, "You see, I don't trusthapp iness. I never did. I never will."Besides offering an uplifting story of personal redem ption and spiritualrebirth, Tender Mercies offers a realistic view of religious conv ersion andreligion itself. Mac may have found Jesus, stopped drinking, and become aloving husband to Rosa L ee and a loving stepfather to Sonny, but thisdoesn't mean h is life will from now on w ill be pain-free and an easy ride.W hat faith offers, in the words of G .K. Chesterton, is a "road-map" for us tolive and a w ay to und erstand and d eal with the challenges, frustrations,setbacks, temptations, and personal tragedies that life throws at us on adaily basis.So what happens to Mac S ledge? Does Sue Ann's tragic death destroy hisnewfoun d faith? Does he deal w ith the pain by resuming his old self-destructive w ays? Tender Mercies' beautiful and powerful conclusionprovides answers. W e overhear Mac singing the hymn, "O n the W ings of theDove," which show s that his religious faith is still intact. The pain of losingSue Ann m ay have caused M ac to question his faith (as many p eople do insimilar circumstances), but it didn't destroy it. The film ends w ith M ac andSonny en joying a game of touch football as Rosa L ee looks on. She smilesand realizes that Mac's transformation is something perman ent.

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future, I hope it once again h elps remind m e wh at Easter is all about andwh at it offers.Dimitri Cavalli is a freelance writer who lives in the Bronx, New York. Heis planning to write books about Pope Pius XII and Joe McCarthy, the latemanager of the New York Yankees. Copyright FIRST THINGS 2012 I Visit www.FirstThings.com for more information.