Split Screen Movies
I think that using the split screen effect on the film of As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner was a really great idea. It really shows the confusing narrative of the book and shows how the overall story was told by multiple narrators.
As I Lay Dying is a really confusing book. The overarching plot isn't really straightforward. You have to infer a lot of things by reading from the perspective of multiple characters. This makes it really difficult to make a movie on the book. Since there are so many narrators, you can't really make a single view film and hope to capture all of the narration from each character. Instead, I think that James Franco did a really nice job with how he developed the film. Rather than a typical single view movie, he created a split screen movie. This allows us to get different perspectives and reactions to the events that happen in the book. For example, it allows us to get different views towards Addie on her deathbed. The split screen view allows us to see though different character's eyes as events play out, just like how we can see through the eyes of the characters in the book.
My only issue with the split screen view is that sometimes it can be a little hard to follow. Since I read the book, I can use my previous knowledge and apply that to watching the movie. I can follow the different scenes as they play out. However, to an ordinary person who hasn't read As I Lay Dying, the split screen view will be really confusing. This is because there are different scenes and timelines happening from both screens. One screen will feature a character doing something while another screen will have a different character doing something else at a different time. This makes things really confusing since we are used to have a single overall view during most movies.
Overall, I still thought that the split screen view of the movie was really nice. Even though it does make things a little confusing, I still think that it captures the style that As I Lay Dying was written in.
Yeah, I agree that someone who hasn't read As I Lay Dying wouldn't really be able to understand the split screen, or when Darl and Cash talk to the camera. Remember also that sometimes the split screens are from the same time just two angles. My issue with the split screen was its on an off-ness that we saw today. Like some scenes with vital narration points of view are glossed over in the full screen showing.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely agree that split screen might be a bit much for anyone who doesn't have some of the back story that we have. There were certain points in the movie where the split screen actually threw me off a little because I wasn't very sure if the scene was still split screen or if it had transitioned to a full screen shot, namely Dark walking into the house to see his mother (like Paul said in class, it looked like addie and Dewey Dell were peering at Darl through a window or something) and one of the super dark horse scenes. I still think the split screen is pretty neat for this story though, nice and refreshing after a lifetime of one-shot films
ReplyDeleteOn top of everything that's been said, having a movie which is mostly split-screen means that the effect is even stronger if there is ever one unified frame. That means that the viewer's full attention should go to that shot, signifying that it is more important than other things. Filmmakers manipulate their audience's focus in many ways, but only with a mostly split-screen movie can they manipulate attention by having a single, "normal" frame.
ReplyDeleteI don't think any of us would want to see *all* movies start using the technique Franco develops for this adaptation--just as we're probably glad not all novels are like _As I Lay Dying_! (Some of you may be wishing that *no* novel was like _As I Lay Dying_ . . .)
ReplyDeleteBut for this particular novel, with its distinctive narrative style, and its sense of various scenes happening simultaneously (e.g. Darl narrating Addie's last moments while also narrating him and Jewel dealing with the wagon in the ditch), it's a pretty clever idea for how to adapt not only the plot but the *style* of the novel to cinematic narrative conventions. It's not an easy film to watch, just as the novel is not easy to read, but for readers of the novel, it offers an interesting visualization of the narrative style and plot.