Child of God

Scott Haze's performance as Lester Ballad is remarkable, but this film is simply depressing--unless that is, your idea of entertainment is spending 100 minutes watching a man of limited intelligence spiral into insanity after his farm is sold out from under him.

I thought my neighbour was a slightly mad, uncouth and antisocial individual, and he sounds a lot like Ballard, so maybe he's a distant relative.

James Franco seems to be trying to make a reputation for himself as a director who will tackle "classic novels" that were considered to be unfilmable, as he did with AS I LAY DYING. Let's say this about the Cormac McCarthy source novel, though. You will hear a lot of praise heaped upon it by the literary intellectuals. What you hear, though, is that the author has an original way with his prose, or that it's well known for a distinctive writing style that is missing common punctuation. What you don't usually hear is "this is a stunningly original and exciting story". It's the style that is praised more than the story.

That has an obvious effect on this movie, then, as you cannot translate the prose to the screen (though Franco tries by injecting voice- overs and on screen text containing actual excerpts). What you are left with is a story that isn't all that exciting and has been done plenty of times. Yes, the necrophilia angle takes it further than most movies are willing to go, but in the end, this is just another Ed Gein influenced horror tales. What it desperately needed was to have something more happen in the actual events of the story. There is very little actual action and very little occurs in this movie. Prepare yourself to spend a great deal of the run time following our main character as he wanders around in the woods talking to himself.

It is the main character and the acting by Scott Haze that is the central reason anyone would want to watch this movie. It is mainly a character study of one man, who we meet in the beginning clearly already suffering from mental illness. Through the course of the events of the story, we watch his mental health further degrade until he is little more than a primal animal, living in a cave and acting out his sexual deviances on whatever victims stumble his way. Haze does an excellent job of portraying this character, who mostly mumbles his way through the movie, putting the emphasis on Haze to portray the characters mental instability through his facial expression. The character could have become a cardboard cutout villain, but through the acting of Haze and some directing by Franco, the character definitely has his sympathetic moments where we feel for the situations that have put him down this course in life.

Ultimately, though, I was just bored through most of the movie. I don't mind artistic. I don't mind low budget. I don't mind experimental. I am not someone who just doesn't have a tolerance for this style of film making. Instead, the only real action is a botched lynching that he escapes from far too conveniently. I just kept waiting for something to happen and it never did, including a huge letdown ending.

This film is about a woodsman who is violent and lonesome. He is a disturbed individuals disowned and disliked by the village.

The main character is a man who is wildly different from the other villagers. He cannot relate to other people, and lives in a world of his own. Despite him being a child of God, his behavior becomes increasingly erratic and violent. He's not a character to like, and not just because of his horrid behavior but also of his appearance. I guess "Child of God" is a good film because it evokes a reaction in the mind of viewers, and provoke thoughts on how a person can descend to such lowly depths. It's not a film to like, but to admire for its artistic achievements.

When word broke out that James Franco, wannabe wunderkind who has taken to adapting classic American literature to the big screen to, well, mixed results, would be adapting my favorite author's work, I prickled with righteous indignation. I don't care much for Franco and indeed find him to be a jack of all trades but indeed master of none: he is a subpar actor, his writing leaves a LOT to be desired, and his direction feels a little too over-reliant on flashy tics that add an unnecessary layer of pretension to the proceedings. And here he is, adapting the work of the master: Cormac McCarthy.

At first, Franco announced he would be tackling McCarthy's masterpiece, the ultraviolent scalp- hunter saga "Blood Meridian", but after a while, he decided to cut his teeth on a smaller -- but by no means lesser -- work of ol' Cormac's. And this is how he came to deliver "Child of God" onto the masses.

Despite its brevity, "Child of God" is by no means an accessible novel: it's lean, mean and has a soul blacker than night. The novel is just like its protagonist, Lester Ballard, a loner who skulks about the Tennessee backwoods like a dog suffering the early onset of rabies, indulging in varying degrees of vicious activities, from assault to necrophilia to, eventually, murder. Ballard is not your typical protagonist, and yet the way Cormac McCarthy approached him, he was made both revolting and at the same time strangely empathetic, as he managed to submerge the reader into Ballard's festering brain. "A child of God much like yourself" is how McCarthy's opening lines describe Ballard, signifying that the madness and malice that ferments within the man is a seed to be found in any of us. And despite its grim premise, "Child of God" is astoundingly, gut-bustingly funny, like the worst sort of dead-baby joke.

Unfortunately, I feel that Franco has missed the levity, instead emphasizing the straight serial- killer premise. This isn't to say that Franco doesn't hew close to the novel; if anything, he is a little too faithful, even relying on having blocks of text from the novel playing out on the screen. It's an admirable slice of avant-garde, even if I feel that Franco is forgetting the first rule of filmmaking: show, don't tell. Even though McCarthy's prose is magic, Franco should've known (as the Coen Brothers and John Hillcoat knew before him) that McCarthy's words can be translated visually to bring the same harrowing, to-the-bone effect.

That said, Franco does show a great deal of passion for the material. But even beyond the use of McCarthy's words, the most crucial aspect of an adaptation of "Child of God" is the man who will be playing Lester Ballard. And in this film, Ballard is played not by Franco, but by his buddy and frequent collaborator Scott Haze. Whether or not you approve of Haze's performance, you can't say he doesn't go for broke in his portrayal of Ballard. Haze's Ballard is beyond laconic; he speaks in strangled, guttural inarticulations that sound almost caveman-like. I do think that there are times that he lays it on a bit too thick, and I think his drooling, leering presence lacks any of the bizarre charm that made Ballard such a fascinatingly funny character in the book. Haze plays Ballard like a "Deliverance" refugee, and while it isn't bad work on its own, I do feel that Haze is a bit too superficial in his take on one of McCarthy's greatest creations. He makes up for it in intensity, though, gotta give him that.

It also doesn't help that Franco's film has a cheap aesthetic to it, lacking any of the grim Gothic atmosphere of the book. It's my biggest issue with Franco as a director: he has no real concept of effective mise-en-scene, instead opting to point the camera and let things play, cutting an odd times that feel far too arrhythmic to be deliberate. Much like last year's interesting-but- too-shallow "As I Lay Dying", Franco gets the story right but tells it in the most simple, A-to-B- to-C way possible. It's worth the watch for Haze's performance (and also for Tim Blake Nelson, who feels like he should've featured in any and every Cormac McCarthy film before this), but it only serves to prove that we're lucky that we dodged a "Blood Meridian" adaptation by James Franco.

For those who've not yet partaken in the depraved and deranged dealings of Cormac McCarthy's 1973 book Child of God you are in for one almighty shock if you by chance stumble upon this new James Franco directed effort, a tale that is utterly original in all its triumphs and shortcomings and a tale that deals with some seriously tricky business that on page seemed almost too much to ever commit to screen but thanks to an obvious commitment to the text by Franco the film works to a level that marks the event as an oddity not unworthy of seeking out.

Franco who has long held affiliation with a desire to transform McCarthy's more insane and often controversial works to screen here goes for much of the same aesthetic he created in his last directional outing As I Lay Dying, a low budget yet gritty feel that uses it's natural surrounds to good effect and gives off the illusion of a bigger project. Franco harbors a good feel for not only Lester Ballard the creation but also his world, the feel of the lonely mountains and the people that inhabit them is captured to great effect and visions so vividly written in the book are bought to life here in many respects. With the world captured so foreign too many of us, Franco in the form of actor Scott Haze has found someone that against all odds is Lester Ballard and leads the story of insanity forward.

Without spoiling the character for those uninitiated, Lester Ballard is a thoroughly despicable and complex creation, a man who despite clearly not being of sane mind is also a man who knows better than the acts he commits. Haze owns this "child of god" from small mannerisms through to out and out rage, from random lonely road discoveries to questionable hair and makeup, Haze gets Lester right. Haze is the focus point of the picture with only small appearances by Tim Blake Nelson and Franco himself it's clear that this film is built by Haze but there is only so far his performance can carry a picture that in the end is dealing with material mighty hard to not only relate to but to tolerate and it's a commendable feat to the filmmakers that you won't be reaching for the off switch a mere 30 minutes in for make no doubt about it there are mightily tough and mature themes the film deals with.

Child of God is a film you feel will slowly be discovered by an unknowing audience who will react strongly either way in favour or hatred to a tale that provides no reason for things being the way they are. For those who are familiar with the text this is a very strong attempt at turning an almost un-filmable book into a quality film and as it stands is another fine turn by Franco as a director in what is shaping up to be an interesting career behind the camera.

3 conniving stuffed toys out of 5