Falling — VIFF 2020
The explosive tension throughout this film is not for the faint of heart.
Viggo Mortensen does a fabulous job with this film. He wrote it, directed it, and starred in it. No small feat! What a beautiful piece of art he orchestrated. Viggo referred to it as a “creative work of fiction”, that has bits of his own life woven into it as he explores his feelings towards his own parents and the things that he learned.
Assisting him was a fantastic crew of actors, which included appearances by Laura Linney and David Cronenberg. Lance Henriksen who plays the protagonist, Willis, does a great job at being a complete ass of a husband and father. His language, explosiveness, and abusive nature is palpable to say the least.
The cast also includes Terry Chen, Sverrir Gudnason, Hannah Gross, Gabby Velis and Bracken Burns — a fantastic pool of talent.
The film brilliantly uses time frame shifts which allows the audience to go back and forth in time as the story unfolds, leading us to the discoveries of the roots of the bitterness and the pain for all involved.
From a therapeutic perspective, I really enjoyed how the all too familiar family dynamic of parent/child conflict is portrayed. The filmmaker plays with the ideas of acceptance and forgiveness in differing forms: Be patient or fight back? Are apologies necessary to move forward? Can you respect someone even if they don’t respect you? Can you exercise self control amidst chaos? Check out this film to find out.
