As I Lay Dying

Addie Bundren (Beth Grant) is dying. Her son Darl (James Franco) takes his brother Jewel (Logan Marshall-Green) on a delivery. It's $3 after all despite Jewel's need to be by her side. Their wagon gets stuck while she dies. Her wish is to be buried in home town of Jefferson. The whole family struggles to bring her body to her final resting place.

There are great actors in this movie. Tim Blake Nelson and Logan are terrific. Beth Grant is also great. In general, everybody is doing good work. The question is how did James Franco do as a director. I am not impressed. The most obvious technique is the split screen. The best thing I can ascribed to the technique is that it hides his amateurish directing style. When Beth Grant screams, the other half is trained on Jim Parrack. That's the only split-screen scene that really works. The movie struggles to gain authenticity and the split screen doesn't help at all. It looks like a modern film school technique in direct conflict with the rural backwoods feel of the family. Franco should be striving for authentic poverty. He fails as he throws various things on the wall. None of it really sticks. The actors are able to keep the audience's interest but they do it despite Franco. The river crossing shows some promise that Franco is functional as a director. Maybe he's over thinking this and tries too hard with the split screen and the actors talking at the camera. Thankfully the last 15 minutes don't have the split screen. It's some of the most compelling scenes in the movie.

I always wondered why James Franco was never vastly recognised as a film director than an actor. If you ask me, I say he was always at his best who mostly pick biographies and dramas. This movie is one of the year's widely undernoticed and under-appreciated. As always, that leads me to hate critics who divert the movie fans from this movie a watch.

This was one of the best dramas I had seen that set in the rural of the early 1900s. About the family of brothers and sister who lost their mother. As being in a remote village they struggle to travel nearby burial ground that is days away to reach. So theirs quest starts to take twists and turns among siblings and the mother nature. Each of them has individual hidden secrets that not related to their mother's death, but as a character. One after another letting us know theirs another face till the adventures ends in peace.

I really liked this movie. The tone of the setting of that era was so perfect. Feels like they all went for a century back to the original time to make the movie so accurately. It was based on the novel by the same name. Might be a fictional work, though, depicts the true lifestyle and transporting system of those times. No fights, no guns, a purely family based drama which might be a little brutal in parts, but kind of realistic according to that era. Don't miss this movie, a movie based on the old era is not frequent nowadays. Movies like this now and then really give a good opportunity to the modern people to know the forgotten culture. Hope you all realise what I am saying about the movie and its material.

I was almost shocked when i heard that they would be making a movie out of my favorite book, and the fact that James Franco and Danny McBride would be in it did not leave me with a good feeling. I was blown away, however, at what a great adaptation it is.

In fact, i'm not sure i'd even call it an adaptation. It IS the book. I cant think of any other movie that was truer to the source material. Obviously the book is much more long winded, and is filled with long, and often puzzling monologues from all the main characters. It's more dream like, and ponderous. But i cant think of anything that the movie left out, or missed, or put it's particular "spin" on, it was all dead on.

That said, the book is a difficult read. The movie is equally difficult. You could read the entire book, and have little idea what it's about. Similarly, you could easily watch this entire movie and be completely puzzled by it. There's a lot of important plot points that gets covered, and you barely even have time to realize exactly what it is the characters are saying. Once again though, the book is the same. Questions like: why is Varadamin's mom a fish? Why is Jewel's mom a horse? Why doesn't Darl have a mom? These are sort of answered, just like in the book, but they also seem completely absurd to even ask. It's a story more about the people involved in it, and not so much about the events that take place, or even the truthfulness of anything or anyone.

I would imagine most viewers will struggle to even understand what it is that the characters are saying, as they all have thick southern accents, Anse being almost unintelligible. Adding to the confusing is the fact that most everything they say is highly complex, poetry like prose that doesn't particularly care if you're following closely or not, they're still going to say it. Once again, pretty much how the book is.

So it's a difficult to understand book, and it's a difficult to understand movie. I certainly loved it, but i suspect most viewers will hate it.

'AS I LAY DYING': Four Stars (Out of Five)

James Franco undertook the ambitious creative effort of trying to adapt author William Faulkner's classic 1930 book (of the same name) and partially succeeded. Franco directed the film and wrote it's screenplay. He also co-stars in the movie with a bunch of his friends; like Danny McBride, Tim Blake Nelson and Jim Parrack (he co-stars with Nelson and Parrack in another film he co-wrote and directed this year, based on a book by Cormac McCarthy, called 'CHILD OF GOD'). The film, if nothing else, is very interesting and it's great to see Franco continuously trying new and different things.

The story begins with the death of Addie Bundren (Beth Grant). She left behind her husband Anse (Nelson), daughter Dewey Dell (Ahna O'Reilly) and four sons (Franco, Parrack, Logan Marshall-Green and Brady Permenter). It then focuses on the family's efforts to transport Addie's body to the town of Jefferson, to be buried (as she wished). Each family member has their own troubles and drama. It's set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi (based on Faulkner's home Lafayette County).

I never read the book so I didn't know the story at all prior to seeing the movie. So for me it was really bizarre and interesting. I know a lot of fans of the book are unhappy with Franco's adaptation but there are some that think it's a good enough summary of a near impossible novel to adapt (into a movie). I liked all of the performances (I especially was fascinated by Nelson and Marshall-Green) and found all the characters to be really interesting. I really liked Franco's directing as well and think he shows a lot of promise with this film. Maybe he shouldn't try to adapt such popular and classic works of modern literature but he definitely has talent as a filmmaker. There's a lot to marvel at in the movie, for sure. It probably doesn't do the source material justice but it's still an extremely interesting film going experience.

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I don't think I've ever seen a film quite like this. It was definitely one of the most faithful adaptations I've ever seen, not only in the story but the way in which it was done. The novel (written by William Faulkner) features 15 different narrators recounting the events, the film (implementing split screen) was able to show different perspectives of the same events simultaneously.

Cinematically, most (if not all) of the camera work was hand-held, and much of the lighting seemed natural. I thought the acting was great overall, and I thought it was well directed. The music was intense, almost too much at times. The novel has never been adapted to the screen previously, (I'm sure partly) due to the fact that the narrative structure is so complex. Overall, I thought it was interesting, and like I said – I've never seen a more true adaptation, as Franco employs all aspects of filmmaking to sync to the novel.