Visualizing As I Lay Dying: Franco's Film

I was surprised when I first watched James Franco's film adaptation of As I Lay Dying at how closely it followed the novel. With a few exceptions, it is essentially follows chapter-by-chapter scene-by-scene.

A couple of people mentioned on Wednesday that the film would be impossible to understand without having first read the book, and I think that is to some extent accurate. Despite the impressive similarities between the two, the mediums of moving picture and prose are sufficiently different that a viewer of the film would likely walk away with a completely different sense of the work than a reader of the novel. I think much of this has to do with the limited ability of a filmmaker to convey a character's internal monologue in a scene. For instance, Darl in the film is familiar to us, and, having read the book, we understand his stares, his nonverbal communication with Dewey Dell, and his clairvoyance. Likewise, we also understand the significance of the split-frame shots as being representative of multiple character's' viewpoints. This information is really only accessible through the book.

Despite the film following the plot of the novel linearly, there are a few thoughts I had on Franco's adaptation of certain characters. Darl is the most obvious variation. I think it is in no way a coincidence that Franco choosing to play Darl's character himself aligned with a decision to make Darl a more prominent, or at least more consistently prominent, character in the film. Although there is no hard-and-fast narrator in either the novel or the film, we talked about how the narrative emphasis shifted from Darl to Cash in the book. I didn't see a hint of such a shift in the movie, as Darl seemed to remain the "main character" throughout. I could be stretching this a little, as his prominence is pretty subtle, but I certainly think it's there.

Dewey Dell was another character in the film who differed from my perception of the character in the novel. She seems much better adjusted and self-aware in the film than in the book. I also think that this is a product of the medium. It would be difficult to translate the jumbled sentences and unique phrasing of Dewey Dell's narration in the book to the screen. I did think it was interesting that Franco chose to deliver part of her retelling of her encounter with Lafe staring directly into the camera as a deliberate act of narration. In the novel, she was always one of the characters we said didn't seem to even be aware that she is a narrator, so her direct communication with the camera is definitely a shift.

Overall, I guess I have to conclude that the inaccessibility of the film that we discussed is in part due to the inaccessibility of the novel itself. Faulkner's literary techniques are no more unconventional, perhaps, than Franco's approach to filmmaking. If I had to speak for the man, I suppose I'd say that Faulkner would approve of the adaptation.

As I Lie Dying

With this flu I have been fortunate enough to catch, I feel a little bit like Addie Burden in her final days. I am certain I am not, however, dying, and I hope to return to school tomorrow and get back to the class' discussion.

In the meantime, some brief thoughts on Faulkner before I write a longer more focused post.

I have always been a little leery of Faulkner. Firstly, my father is something of a Faulkner fan, and as a general rule, nerdy children of academic types tend to make it a point to dislike or simply avoid their parents literary tastes. Or at least I did. I also, in my slight bias as a Northerner, never had any problems passing over Faulkner's stories of the American South in favor of narratives with settings and characters I found more familiar. I now see that I have been missing out. Thank you Mr. Mitchell for putting Faulkner on the reading list and giving me the reason to override my slight aversions and read As I Lay Dying.

I generally reserve these words for time-tested favorite authors. Nabokov. Joyce. But now Faulkner can be added to my personal list of "men who write like gods". His prose is... delicious. His metaphors are creative and alive without ever feeling forced or ridiculous. When you think about it As I Lay Dying told any other way would be the hum-drum story of a dumb or crazy failure of a Mississippi farmer and his overabundance of poorly-raised offspring dealing with the unfortunate death of his ailing wife. It would not be the literary masterpiece Faulkner created.

I find myself especially drawn to Darl--as a character perhaps, but specifically as a narrator, because it is in his words that the novel's prose becomes most interesting. Darl's descriptions are the perfect mixture of unschooled Mississippi farm boy and seemingly-claivoyant prophet. I don't know. I get really excited about reading Darl's chapters, and much of that excitement is just for the language he uses.

Anyway, I hope everyone else is enjoying Faulkner as much as I am. More posts of a more organized nature later.