Highlights include an audio excerpt of Faulkner reading from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Highlights include an audio excerpt of Faulkner reading from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, several manuscript pages that we see up close, and some vintage footage of life in the South that's now just a chapter in history books. Lowlights? There wasn´t as much footage of the great writer as I expected.
For those who aren't familiar with Faulkner's work but would like to be, Light in August is probably a good place to start, but I've always had a soft spot for the very weird but brilliant comic novel "As I Lay Dying," which follows the Bundren family as they try to honor the matriarch's wish to take her body to Jefferson for burial. It's a great example of Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness style of writing and his use of multiple narrators to convey a sense of the action, character back stories, and various themes. It's also funny as hell, and a quick-but-memorable read.
Video:
Not the greatest picture, but far from the worst. There's plenty of grain throughout, which at some point the filmmakers confront in a rather ingenious way, by blowing some of the photos up so that it's like looking at a pointillistic work up close and seeing all those dots. Since much of what we see is vintage, the quality varies greatly. The presentation is 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Colors are a little dull in the color sequences, muted, one suspects, so they'll blend in better with the vintage black-and-white stills and video clips.
Audio:
The audio is a nothing-fancy Dolby Digital 2.0, which is nothing you notice, to be honest, since it's mostly voiceover. There's very little in the way of effects, and even music is used relatively sparingly. There are no subtitles.
Extras:
And, there are no extras.
Bottom Line:
"Great Writers: William Faulkner" reminds me of the kind of filmstrips we saw in high school, and I can still see this entry from Kultur playing well for those audiences. But the vintage material also makes this a treat for non-students. Fans of Faulkner probably won't learn much that they didn't already know, but for those who don't know him or have been meaning to read him, this documentary provides a nice introduction.
For those who aren't familiar with Faulkner's work but would like to be, Light in August is probably a good place to start, but I've always had a soft spot for the very weird but brilliant comic novel "As I Lay Dying," which follows the Bundren family as they try to honor the matriarch's wish to take her body to Jefferson for burial. It's a great example of Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness style of writing and his use of multiple narrators to convey a sense of the action, character back stories, and various themes. It's also funny as hell, and a quick-but-memorable read.
Video:
Not the greatest picture, but far from the worst. There's plenty of grain throughout, which at some point the filmmakers confront in a rather ingenious way, by blowing some of the photos up so that it's like looking at a pointillistic work up close and seeing all those dots. Since much of what we see is vintage, the quality varies greatly. The presentation is 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Colors are a little dull in the color sequences, muted, one suspects, so they'll blend in better with the vintage black-and-white stills and video clips.
Audio:
The audio is a nothing-fancy Dolby Digital 2.0, which is nothing you notice, to be honest, since it's mostly voiceover. There's very little in the way of effects, and even music is used relatively sparingly. There are no subtitles.
Extras:
And, there are no extras.
Bottom Line:
"Great Writers: William Faulkner" reminds me of the kind of filmstrips we saw in high school, and I can still see this entry from Kultur playing well for those audiences. But the vintage material also makes this a treat for non-students. Fans of Faulkner probably won't learn much that they didn't already know, but for those who don't know him or have been meaning to read him, this documentary provides a nice introduction.
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