As I Lay Dying is clearly very tough source material, adapted from the William Faulkner novel of the same name. This doesn’t stop Franco taking it and running with it.
The style is fractured, including split screens and direct addresses to camera. Does it work? Not really, but that’s not the point. It’s a film that feels very much like a project and experiment. One of Franco’s many. And to be so willing to test and try different things is a quality that should be heralded. I mean Faulkner wrote the original work between the hours of midnight and 4am for six weeks and allegedly didn’t change a word… That’s different, right?
fortuneandglorykid 