Faulkner classic rekindles fire in James Franco’s belly

FRANCO. Less is more.

James Franco’s decision to act in and direct the screen adaptation of William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” is brave. The classic 1930 novel’s stream-of-consciousness style and complex narrative structure provide a challenge that has rekindled the fire in the actor-director’s belly.

Franco explains, “The book was one of the first novels I read outside of the high school curriculum. I found it interesting, because each chapter was written in the first person by a different character—and they all share a journey that readers can follow!” The task wasn’t easy, however: He had to turn a 56,000-word, 59-chapter and 15-narrator story into a 120-page screenplay!

When Addie (Beth Grant), the matriarch of the poor Bundren family, dies, her widower Anse (Tim Blake Nelson) and their five children—Cash (Jim Parrack), Darl (Franco), Jewel (Logan Marshall-Green), Dewey Dell (Ahna O’Reilly) and Vardaman (Brady Permenter)—are compelled to take a road trip on a carriage (with Addie in a coffin, built by Cash) across the Mississippi countryside to bring Addie’s remains to her hometown, some 40 miles away, for burial!

If you like family dramas with the convolutions of a telenovela, “As I Lay Dying” has them in heaps, but presents each twist without the tiresome predictability of TV soaps: The family doesn’t just face the antagonistic forces of nature along the way (a flooded river, accidents), it also deals with self-inflicted and man-made challenges (a raging barn fire, a sexual assault, an unexpected wedding) that reveal each character’s personal turmoil.

Darl narrates a substantial chunk of the tale, but the story truly unravels when we see it from the perspective of the other members of the family: Toothless Anse swears to honor his wife’s dying wish to be buried in Jeffersonville—but, there’s more to this gesture than spousal devotion.

Addie’s favorite son is Jewel who, unknown to his siblings, is illegitimate—a product of the headstrong matriarch’s affair with Reverend Whitfield (Steve Nabors)!

Sexual tryst

Even as she grieves for her mother, Dewey Dell, the only daughter, is “distracted” by her growing, well-kept dilemma: She is pregnant—the result of her sexual tryst with a local farmhand!

Throughout the movie, Franco utilizes a split screen to present the different narrators’ internal monologues and contrasting points of view. The tack is novel and inventive, but soon overstays its welcome, because it discombobulates more than it enlightens, since it aims to impress more than concentrate on telling the story.

Fortunately, the film achieves greater coherence as it gears up for its shocking wrap-up, because its stagey and distracting storytelling style becomes less frenetic.

Like life itself, Addie’s story is an alternating mishmash of random events and life-changing dramatic upheavals, but its shaky bits are made less confusing when we focus on them, one problem at a time. —That’s when the production truly comes into its own. Indeed, less is more!