Child of God

Year: 2014

Runtime: 104 min

Language: English

DramaThrillerCrime

In 1960s Tennessee, a solitary and alienated man struggles with his sanity, spiraling into a disturbing pattern of violence and isolation. As his grasp on reality weakens, he commits increasingly shocking acts, revealing a descent into profound madness and despair, leaving a devastating impact on those around him.

Direct adaptation

Read the Child of God book behind the movie

A Dispossessed East Tennessee Outcast Retreats from Community into Caves, Theft, Murder, and Necrophilia while the Narration Refuses to Place His Monstrosity Outside Humanity · by Cormac McCarthy

Why this book?

James Franco's film directly follows Lester Ballard's dispossession, wandering through rural Tennessee, arrest, retreat into caves, voyeurism, discovery of a dead couple, murders, and keeping of women's bodies. It reproduces many incidents and fragments of McCarthy's dialogue while turning the novel's shifting narration and community testimony into Scott Haze's physical performance and a largely linear visual descent. The book is essential not because the plot is missing on screen, but because its biblical title, local voices, bleak comedy, and lyrical landscape continually complicate the distance between Ballard and the society that calls him monstrous.

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