Scott Haze plays a deeply disturbed man trying to get what he believes is his in CHILD OF GOD
CHILD OF GOD (James Franco, 2013)
Village East Cinemas
181-189 Second Ave. at 12th St.
Opens Friday, August 1
212-529-6799
www.villageeastcinema.com
www.wellgousa.com
In James Franco’s faithful, brutally compelling adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s third novel, 1973’s Child of God, Scott Haze gives a courageous, unforgettable performance as Lester Ballard, a deeply disturbed man wreaking havoc on his small rural community in Sevier County in the Tennessee mountains. “His name was Lester Ballard, child of God, much like yourself, perhaps,” a narrator intones as the film opens. But Lester is not like everyone else. He is almost more animal than man, his speech hard to understand, his face hairy and rough, his gait hurried and uneven, a reclusive soul with no ability to differentiate between right and wrong, more at home in the woods and in caves than living among other people. When he lowers his head slightly and stares right into the camera, he evokes Charles Manson filtered through Charles Bukowski, with more than a touch of Jack Nicholson in The Shining; there doesn’t seem to be an ounce of humanity in him. (McCarthy has noted that Ballard was inspired at least in part by real-life serial killer Ed Gein, who also inspired Old Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Norman Bates in Psycho.) Having been kicked off his family’s land, an angered Lester sleeps in a ramshackle cabin, venturing out primarily to kill an animal for food or to seek other carnal pleasures in his own, primal way. When he sees a young couple having sex in a car, his instinct is to get rid of the boy and take the girl for himself, with no thought of the consequences.
Director and cowriter James Franco discuss a scene in adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s CHILD OF GOD
Lester is being watched closely by the aptly named Sheriff Fate (Tim Blake Nelson) and Deputy Cotton (Jim Parrack), but there’s no predicting what he will do next, and to whom. He’s a danger to everyone he meets, yet Franco, who cowrote the script with his friend and producer Vince Jolivette, manages to make Lester a somewhat sympathetic figure, despite his horrific existence, which soon includes necrophilia. No matter how despicable his actions are, it is hard not to want him to get away with it all, as Franco builds a shocking compassion for Lester from the very first scene, when John Greer (Brian Lally), a neighbor who is determined to buy the Ballard property at auction, viciously bashes in Lester’s skull. The highly literate, ubiquitous Franco, who has also adapted William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury, stays true to both the spirit and the intricacies of McCarthy’s story; every scene but one was taken directly from the book, which Franco fell in love with when he read it in graduate school. Child of God is by no means an easy film to watch, and it is sure to elicit a multitude of extreme reactions, both positive and negative, reminiscent of the response to Lars von Trier’s controversial 2009 New York Film Festival selection, Antichrist. But no matter where you stand on the film itself, it’s impossible not to be blown away by Haze’s remarkably intense performance, his every word and movement absolutely thrilling to behold. (Haze, Lally, and Franco are also collaborating on the world premiere of Robert Boswell’s play The Long Shrift, running through August 23 at the Rattlestick Theater.)