R.I.P. Robert Duvall

Robert Duvall was a rock, imperturable. 

You could blow up artillery right next to him and he wouldn't flinch (Apocalypse Now). But watch out if you did perturb him, you might get the wrong end of a baseball bat (The Apostle). 

But not all of Duvall's movies started with the letters "Apo." He was just a constant throughout the movies of the past 50 years, only quitting four years ago when he was 91. 

If mentioning his work in The Apostle seems like a strange way to start a eulogy to the man, who we lost this week at age 95, try telling that to IMDB, who lists him as "Actor, The Apostle (1997)" when you type in his name. 

That film does serve as an exact mid-point between the time that a lot of people might have first become aware of him, in The Godfather (1972), and his last film in 2022, The Pale Blue Eye, which I haven't yet seen.

Of course, The Godfather wasn't nearly the start of Duvall's career. He was on TV starting from 1960, which means he got a relatively late start around age 29 and still had a career that spanned 65 years, if you consider the career to have been effectively ongoing until his death. We wouldn't have really been surprised to see this stalwart still turn up again, even at age 95, would we? His traits played at any age.

And it was iconic performances basically from the start, as he played Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird in 1962. Most of his 1960s stayed on TV, but by the end of the decade, he transferred to film and never looked back, appearing in such films as Bullitt, True Grit, MASH and THX 1138 before Francis Ford Coppola presumably got advice from his good friend George Lucas and cast him as the consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather. 

I didn't come to any of this work until I was an adult, and I still haven't see the original version of True Grit. But he was a constant in films I did see when I was younger as well. 

Oddly, the titles from Duvall's career don't read as quite so iconic after the 1970s, which also included films like The Conversation, Network and The Godfather Part II. (He had the wisdom to skip The Godfather Part III, though I can't remember what the story logic was for why he wasn't there.) 

But he was always around, turning up here and there, and always contributing an intensity you didn't soon forget. He also had a way of laughing that made you think it might be a prelude to killing you. 

Duvall may not have been a personal favorite, but there was never any doubt that I needed to write a remembrance of him here, which I have done quickly now as I prepare for work and another busy day. That was the purest indication of his impact on cinema during the entirety of my lifespan. 

Rest in peace.