Roger Ebert’s famous line about movies being “a machine that generates empathy” was on my mind quite heavily after seeing Falling, the family drama directing debut of Viggo Mortensen. Because Falling is a movie that asks you to empathize with a really monstrous person. And it doesn’t use the usual tools to do so, such as revealing a traumatic past or an emotional crisis or a secret act of human decency. The film is split between the past and present, and even in the former we see that this guy was always kind of an asshole. The film asks you to empathize with him almost just for his humanity -because it would make you the decent person. I don’t know that I do in the end, but this film challenged me to try, without resorting to any of the usual bullshit about being a good person deep down -and that is something I very much respect, especially coming from a man whose last movie was Green Book!
And it’s true there is some of that Green Book naivete at play here; you get the sense that Mortensen believes his fiercely conservative, homophobic, vulgar and patriarchal lead character Willis (Lance Henriksen in maybe his best performance) is not beyond hope of redemption (as much as these last few years have made such beliefs seem positively antiquated). But that redemption doesn’t come, or at least Mortensen doesn’t allow it to breach the films’ text. Instead, he’s much more interested in just exploring the complexity of a relationship between two family members so starkly divided -Mortensen himself in the other lead role playing Willis’ liberal middle-aged gay son John.
We get a sense of the dynamic right from the start, in an immediately unpleasant scene on the flight from upstate New York to California where Willis gets out of his seat and starts angrily yelling at his deceased wife who he believes is on the floor above. John has to calm him down, set him straight, and get him to the airplane restroom all while trying to alleviate the scene being caused. And Willis is resistant every step of the way, denigrating John and coarsely reprimanding him, setting the tone for much of the movie. Interspersed with this are memories coming to Willis (often with very smart visual cues) of when he was a young man and John only a child.
The plot concerns John taking in his father for a time while making plans to sell off the family farm in light of Willis’ increasing dementia. And it means bringing him in close and consistent contact not only with John, but his husband Eric (Terry Chen) and their daughter Monica (Gabby Velis). Every scene of this family together is brimming with tension given how little it takes for Willis to make an offensive remark, call his son a slur, and just behave with undue aggression or inappropriate candour. And for the most part John’s family is tolerant, arguably too much so as Willis seems to do everything possible to get kicked out on the street, from the typical casual racism to the more atypical explicit sexual conversations coloured with a lot of foul misogyny towards basically every woman he’s ever known. And yet it’s emphasized he gets along well with his granddaughter, the only one he seems to genuinely want to be kind to, even as he makes no altercation to his general behaviour in her presence. To an observer, it makes no sense –even to John it doesn’t seem to.
Mortensen, in showing us Willis’ memories may be drawing an explanation in the parallel this relationship has to the young Willis’ with the child John. These flashbacks aren’t always incorporated usefully, and the perspective is unclear –sometimes shifting between Willis and John, thus weakening it as a device of Willis’ dementia; but one thing that is communicated aptly is that any contentment or good nature that Willis ever had is exclusive to that short period when John was little and he and his wife Gwen (Hannah Gross) still seemed to love each other. But whether this could ever be rekindled, or even how much was there to begin with is totally up to the interpretation of the audience. Certainly, Willis’ decent behaviour towards Monica is still dwarfed by how awful he is to everybody else, and the flashbacks don’t paint a sympathetic picture either: being extremely short with his children when he’s with them, and responding to an act of rebelliousness from John by knocking him off his horse. Sverrir Gudnnason is very good as the younger Willis, not betraying much in the way of genuine kindness as he embodies the coldness and frustration of a man belonging to an old world rapidly changing and refusing to adapt by any means necessary.
Everyone has a certain moral barometer to this, and though Mortensen clearly believes in the value of reaching out to people like Willis, he never lets him off the hook. He recognizes how much and how quickly the audience despises him, how we might ask of John ‘why even bother with such a person?’ But as much as it may be important to cut a toxic family member out of one’s life, this film shows how it’s not always an easy option. There’s nuance to John’s relationship with his father and an obligation there, perhaps sewn into his upbringing, not to just let the old coot suffer and die in solitude without lifting a finger. By now, the world has thoroughly passed Willis by, he no longer has the physical or social power he once had -perhaps why he resorts so much to abusing his remaining emotional power- he’s a pathetic, pitiable relic. No scene better emphasizes this than a family get-together that shows how his other relatives view him in light of his ravings: a grandson who utterly hates him, a granddaughter who refuses to be intimidated by him, and his own daughter (an understated Laura Linney) maintaining a quiet resilience through the traumatic scars he’s still capable of creating in her.
I stated earlier that Willis isn’t redeemed or forgiven, though the climax does invoke a revelatory aspect of his character that adds another layer to his psychological state -while also being the predicted explosive point between him and John. It doesn’t change anything really but it is insight, and that absence of moral judgement I think is something genuinely bold, and it’s what makes the film much more fascinating than it is good. It is pretty good for the record, Mortensen is a fine director and makes some compelling and pointed choices both in the creative and technical departments. And it’s very nice to see David Cronenberg make an appearance, from whom Mortensen has no doubt learned a lot. He’s perhaps not quite so invested in the acting, having initially wanted someone else to play John, but he is decent enough and gets that wonderfully hateable performance out of Henriksen that he needs. Your mileage may vary on Falling, especially depending on how much personal experience you’ve had with people like Willis (who is absolutely not an exaggerated caricature), but I think it’s having that conversation on family divisiveness with smarter consideration than you often see. At the very least it’s willing to admit there are no easy answers.
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