As I Lay Dying an be seen as an ensemble piece within one larger film as a whole. The weakest link in the ensemble, disappointingly, is Franco himself, who retains a smirky remove even during Darl Bundren's most emotionally bare scenes -- though he does at least give himself the best close-ups. You might say that remove characterizes Franco's direction, too: sporadically clever as his treatment is, he never seems all that invested in the novel except as a particularly challenging exercise for his ongoing artistic self-invention. Challenge passed, then. But the task of creating a film even obliquely equal to the rageful literary brazenness of Faulkner remains a hopeless task that Franco, with nothing to lose. Overall, the film differs on another level of severe boredom.
Review of As I Lay Dying
