Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Nader Fallah, Elham Korda, Majid Aghakarimi, Vahid Rad
Intro:
…a sombre, quiet and lyrical film, whose languid pace and subtlety make it seem longer than its 74-minute running time – but in a good way.
This is adapted, very freely, from the 1930 Southern Gothic novel of the same name by William Faulkner. It is (of course) relocated to Iran, and there are superficially major plot differences. (The central death in the book is of a woman, for example, while here it’s of a man.) But the big themes and the structure are intact.
The premise, or at least the earliest event, is that an 80-year-old man with a number of children by different women dies. He’s stipulated – in person, though not in his will – that he wishes to be buried in a certain distant location. And, more to the point, he emphatically did not want to be buried in the town where he died: a place whose inhabitants hated him, and vice versa.
The various adult sons and daughter start driving across the desert as requested, with the steadily deteriorating corpse in one of their cars. There are tensions between them, and revelations of mistrust, unresolved disagreements, and ambiguities which should not be revealed here…
‘As I Lay Dying is about as downbeat as it gets, but – intermittent references to putrefaction aside – the grimness is predominantly psychological rather than physical. In fact, on a visual level, it’s rather beautiful and ‘poetically’ shot, especially the twilight scenes. This is a sombre, quiet and lyrical film, whose languid pace and subtlety make it seem longer than its 74-minute running time – but in a good way.
