After receiving acclaim in Cannes last May as an official selection in the Un Certain Regard section, actor-director James Franco brings the searing drama “As I Lay Dying” to mainstream cinemas.
Directed by James Franco from a screenplay by Franco and Matt Rager, “As I Lay Dying” is adapted from the 1930 classic American novel by William Faulkner. The story chronicles the Bundren family as they traverse the Mississippi countryside to bring the body of their deceased mother Addie to her hometown for burial.
Addie’s husband Anse and their children, Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell, and the youngest one Vardaman, leave the farm on a carriage with her coffin – each affected by Addie’s death in a profound and different way. Their road trip to Jefferson, some forty miles away, is disrupted by every antagonistic force of nature or man: flooded rivers, injury and accident, a raging barn fire, and not least of all — each individual character’s personal turmoil and inner commotion which at times threaten the fabric of the family more than any outside force.
The film stars Franco, Danny McBride, Tim Blake Nelson, Logan Marshall-Green, Beth Grant and Ahna O’Reilly.
Widely regarded as one of the best works of 20th century literature, “As I Lay Dying” is known for its unique approach to storytelling — shifting the first person narration between a whopping 15 characters over the course of nearly 60 chapters.
Published in 1930, “As I Lay Dying” holds a solid canonical position as one of Faulkner’s best, most frequently republished works, along with “The Sound and the Fury,” “Light in August” and “Absalom, Absalom!,” all of them set in the novelist’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a Mississippi state of mind as well mapped mentally by its creator as Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
“As I Lay Dying” be shown exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas nationwide starting Nov. 27.