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Good films are rather like buses. You wait around for weeks, then suddenly several turn up at once. Robert Duvall's wonderful tour-de-force, The Apostle, was reviewed in last month's issue, and this month we have a film which is closely related to it. In fact, Sling Blade was made and released in the USA some time before The Apostle, winning an Oscar for writerdirector-star Billy Bob Thornton for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 1997 Academy Awards. Thornton is the redneck saved by Robert Duvall's preacher in The Apostle. Thornton has said that Duvall is his mentor and model, and Duvall makes a brief but powerful appearance in Sling Blade.
Put briefly, the story is, as the best ones often are, simple. Thornton plays Karl Childers, a slow, silent man who, as the film starts, is about to be released from the State Mental Institution in Arkansas where he was sent for the murder of his mother and the son of the local mill owner. He returns to his hometown, where he befriends a young boy, Frank Wheatley (Lucas Black) whose father has recently died in tragic circumstances. The boy's mother, Linda (Natalie Canerday) is going out with a thoroughly unpleasant character, Doyle Hargraves, excellently played by Dwight Yoakam. Karl gets a job helping to fix lawnmowers, and a place to stay in the Wheatley's garage. As his love for the Wheatleys grows, Doyle's abusive and violent behaviour becomes more and more intolerable. The denouement is as tragic as it is inevitable.
Again like The Apostle, this is a film centred on the main character. Thornton's portrayal of Karl is a great screen performance, one which pulls you in, makes you believe in the character, makes you care about him. Of course, directing oneself is always an open invitation to narcissism and self-regard, but by and large the way in which the camera focuses on Karl avoids this, making him rather a still presence at the centre of the film, an observer, a listener. This is nowhere clearer than in a scene when Doyle, having drunk too much, turns abusively against everyone the others in the band in which he performs, Linda, Frank and Vaughan (John Ritter), Linda's gay boss. As they fight and row,...