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A dispossessed, violent man';s life is a disastrous attempt to exist outside the social order. Successively deprived of parents and homes and with few other ties, Ballard descends to the level of a cave dweller as he falls deeper into crime and degradation.
James Franco should be hailed for taking a crack at such dense and unforgiving material, but the relentless grimness leaves you numb rather than enlightened.
There's no denying Franco's ambition, and in "Child of God" you can see evidence (almost for the first time) that he's reaching for something he may one day attain.
With Child of God, Franco has come up with something distinctive that both captures the atmosphere of McCarthy's neo-Gothic universe and suggests a consolidation on the director's As I Lay Dying.
This wrong-headed adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's taut 1973 novel, as interpreted by director James Franco, spends too much time trying to create an element of compassion for this devilishly aberrant killer.
... certainly not for all tastes, but as a raw and visceral portrait of sexual and social defiance, it conveys a powerful glimpse into backwoods desperation and survival instincts.
Ultimately the movie's message is that community is sacred, all God's children should be cared for, and the destitute need a human net to save them from descent into madness.
Beautifully shot, well acted, and the score is lovely, but the film has nothing to say about the human degradation in which it wallows. If you're gonna make me smell dung for two hours, at least fertilize my lawn.