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‘Falling’ Review: Father and Son Reunion

Viggo Mortensen writes, directs and stars in this lacerating drama about a son dealing with his father’s mental decline.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

The dementia drama is on something of an upswing, and recently actors like Anthony Hopkins , Bruce Dern and Javier Bardem have joined the growing ranks of performers eager to portray a fragmenting mind.

Of these, Lance Henriksen’s work in “Falling” might be the most brutally demanding, and the hardest to watch. As the foul-tempered, bigoted Willis, the actor is a weeping wound of intolerance and invective. Fully committing to dialogue rarely heard outside of scabrous comedies, Henriksen is the incendiary heart of a movie that ultimately proves more involving — and rather more complicated — than we expect.

We meet Willis during a tantrum on an airplane. His middle-aged son, John (Viggo Mortensen, in his writing and directing debut) is bringing him to Los Angeles to house-hunt. Willis, no longer able to manage his beloved farm in upstate New York, has reluctantly agreed to move closer to John and John’s sister, Sarah (Laura Linney). In the meantime, he will stay with John and his husband, Eric (Terry Chen), and their young daughter (Gabby Velis). Brace for the homophobic slurs.

Extensive flashbacks reveal that Willis has always had a mean streak (“I’m sorry I brought you into this world, so you could die,” are some of his earliest words to the infant John), but illness and the early stages of senility have made him monstrous. Somehow, though, Henriksen lets us see the loneliness and fear that gnaw at the edges of Willis’s anger — and help explain why John responds to his father’s abuse with such calm resignation. The film, though, is not without its comic moments: I’ll go a long way to see David Cronenberg play a proctologist.

A small movie with outsized philosophical ambitions, “Falling” doesn’t go down easily. The nuanced performance of the Icelandic actor Sverrir Gudnason, who plays the younger Willis, is crucial, exposing the volatility and subdued menace that has alienated two wives and caused untold damage to his children. Some scenes scrape your senses like sandpaper, while others are so tender they’re almost destabilizing. Together, they shape a picture that’s tragically specific, yet more comfortable with mystery than some viewers might prefer.

Though not entirely autobiographical, “Falling” is informed by Mortensen’s memories of caring for several family members stricken by dementia. The result is a movie keenly aware of the effort involved in reconciling the parent we have with the one we might have wished for.

Falling Rated R for sexism, racism, homophobia and terrible table manners. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. Rent or buy on Google Play , Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.

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‘Falling’ Is an Honest, 4-Star Directing Debut for Viggo Mortensen

With virile, versatile viggo mortensen, 'falling' is simply the latest in a string of challenges, rex reed writes in his four-star review..

Powerful, persuasive and insightful, Falling is a sensitive and beautifully composed film that marks the formidable directing debut of the wonderful actor Viggo Mortensen . He is off to a great start. Critics keep remarking how brave he is to play a middle-aged gay man saddled with the responsibility of taking care of a monstrous, mean-spirited homophobic father dedicated to making his life a living hell. But where’s the courage of playing against type, when that’s exactly what he’s been doing for his whole career?

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Falling is just another remarkable chapter in a life full of surprises. Poet, author, painter, musician, actor and man of as many disguises as Lon Chaney, Mr. Mortensen does whatever interests him. Straight artists joining the current rage of playing gay characters is nothing new. Most recently think Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan as sexually graphic lovers in Ammonite , or Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci as  a same-sex married senior couple facing senility and death in Supernova .

With virile, versatile Viggo, Falling is simply the latest in a string of challenges. Both brawny and brainy, he could have been a matinee idol. But from a full-frontal nude wrestling Russian mobster in Eastern Promises to an innovative father raising his children without technology, outside the parameters of normal education in Captain Fantastic , if this rangy, diverse actor has taught us anything it’s to expect the unexpected. He’s always shown more of a fascination for the aesthetics of filmmaking than the mechanics. As the star, director and screenwriter of Falling, he gets to demonstrate a vast knowledge of all three talents. It’s the challenge that intrigues him, the curiosity of dancing on the lip of the volcano that defines his art.

Reportedly based on incidents in his own family, he now plays an airline pilot named John Peterson who lives with his life partner Eric ( Terry Chen ) and their adopted daughter in a sunny California suburb far from the freezing temperatures in upstate New York where he and his sister Sarah (another consummate, understated and unforgettable character essay by Laura Linney ) were raised. John also has a vile, chain-smoking, whiskey-guzzling, hate-spewing racist father named Willis who wastes no opportunity to insult, humiliate and inflict misery on everyone in his presence. Visiting them from the farm where he still lives—alone, rejected, and wallowing in misery—Willis is a senile, cantankerous and actually quite reprehensible old man (brilliantly played, warts and all, by Lance Henriksen ). During his dreaded and disruptive stay, John goes above and beyond the call of family duty to make his father as comfortable as possible, enduring the poison Willis spreads around like spider sperm. 

Flashbacks of Johnny’s childhood reveal fragments of what went wrong. As a boy, his aptitude for duck hunting, playing with snakes, and other manly pursuits were more conducive to fatherly pride, but as he matured, it became painfully obvious that Johnny’s Dad was always a bully and a brute to the whole family—making sure they spent most of their time together in tears. The years have only soured his personality. In the film’s best written sequence, when Sarah endures a punishing Sunday dinner so her children can spend an evening with their grandfather, Willis extends his hostility to Johnny’s longtime lover Eric, providing a constant irritant to everyone at the dinner table every time John calls Eric his husband, not his “boyfriend.” He even manages to denigrate his son’s seniority as a respected Air Force pilot: “Being a fairy outweighs whatever you think you’ve done to serve your country.”

SEE ALSO: Viggo Mortensen Wanted to “Pose Questions” by Making ‘Falling’

The no-holds-barred writing is exemplary. In that single dinner party scene, Mr. Mortensen shows you everything you need to know, even without dialogue. I know there will be viewers who hate the father so much they will wonder why John doesn’t throw him out of the house. When years of pent-up rage finally detonate violently, the tendency to applaud will be hard to suppress. But the strength, patience and universal need to forgive and bridge generational gaps  Mr. Mortensen is aiming for have a devastating effect. This is not a movie about action; it’s about the things that make people who they really are for better or worse. With his soft-spoken voice and alert observance of human behavior, Mr. Mortensen gives the most humane performance of his colorful career, playing patience and kindness with understated balance. Mr. Henriksen matches him, mood for mood, scene by scene. Even in his most shattering moments of desperation, he doesn’t even know how to show the vaguest sense of gratitude or affection. He goes for the jugular and finds the truth. 

What Viggo Mortensen strives for in movies is the realism of stillness, acting between the lines. In interviews, he has said the most important question he asks at the end of a movie is “And now what?” You’ll be asking that question a lot after the final shot in Falling. It’s one of the most honest, truthful, intelligent films in years—and one of the saddest.

Falling is available to see in theaters and on demand.

• SEE ALSO : Will Keen On Playing Vladimir Putin On Broadway in ‘Patriots’

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John Peterson lives with his partner Eric and their adopted daughter in Southern California. When he is visited by his aging father who is searching for a place to retire, their two very dif... Read all John Peterson lives with his partner Eric and their adopted daughter in Southern California. When he is visited by his aging father who is searching for a place to retire, their two very different worlds collide. John Peterson lives with his partner Eric and their adopted daughter in Southern California. When he is visited by his aging father who is searching for a place to retire, their two very different worlds collide.

• Viggo Mortensen
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• Trivia Both of Viggo Mortensen 's parents suffered from dementia.

Willis : Christmas is meaningless anymore. It's all jingle with no bells.

• Crazy credits Dedication before end credits: For Charles and Walter Mortensen.
• Connections Features Red River (1948)
• Soundtracks A Little Late Written and Performed by Skating Polly Courtesy of Chap Stereo

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• Nov 24, 2020
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• February 5, 2021 (United States)
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‘Falling’ Review: Lance Henriksen Is a Bad Dad for the Ages in Viggo Mortensen’s Directorial Debut

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. Perceval Pictures and Quiver Distribution will release it in theaters and on VOD and digital on Friday, February 5.

It’s a testament to Viggo Mortensen ’s restless and singularly creative spirit that nobody could possibly predict the subject of his directorial debut, and perhaps an even greater testament that “ Falling ” immediately makes sense as the kind of movie that the modern poet, abstract painter, experimental musician, prolific anthropologist, septilingual traveler, Oscar-winning “Green Book” accomplice, and rightful King of Gondor would feel compelled to make. And David Cronenberg’s cameo as a frustrated proctologist is somehow least among the reasons why.

Ostensibly a drama about a married gay liberal who struggles to care for his homophobic father during what might be the final days of his life, Mortensen’s first effort behind the camera never settles into the expected grooves of its genre or premise. On the contrary, the film vibrates at its own unrecognizable frequency as soon as it starts, and only allows for easy categorization during the clunkier moments when it bumps against clichés like a boat that would rather crash into lighthouses than use them for guidance.

The result is a movie that baffles and enthralls in equal measure, and seldom lingers anywhere in between. Often abrasive, occasionally sweet, and sometimes grasping for transcendence, “Falling” doesn’t feel like a story that Mortensen wanted to tell so much as it does a deeply personal examination of human fragility — of the heavens people reach in their own happiness, of the intangibles that cause some of them to lose their balance, and of the gravity that sends them plummeting down to the earth until they’re buried in it.

Inspired by the deaths of Mortensen’s parents and the time he spent looking after them in those confused final years, “Falling” begins with one of the flashbacks that are laced throughout the movie, as a man and his wife bring their newborn baby home from the hospital sometime in the middle of the 20th century. Alone with his son for the first time, the father leans over the crib and says something that many people have thought in that moment, but very, very few have probably said aloud: “I’m sorry I brought you into this world, so that you could die.” And with that, the baby starts crying. Get used to it, kiddo —“Falling” isn’t here to make friends.

In the film’s “present” timeline (actually set in the aftermath of the 2008 election), the circle of life is almost complete and the son has assumed responsibility for his father. It’s not an easy job. Willis ( Lance Henriksen , feral and fully committed as a widower shipwrecked on the jagged rocks of his own senility) has grown into a vituperative old man who decided to only look for the worst in people at a certain point in his life and has been stuck in a tailspin ever since. It’s hard to know where his natural hostility towards other people ends and the foul-mouthed violence of his cognitive decline begins, but anyone who’s cared for someone with dementia knows all too well that losing sight of that line is the last thing that happens before love curdles into resentment.

Having said that, “Falling” is the rare film that makes it more difficult to see that border as it goes along, and eventually you can’t help but wonder if Willis is just a huge asshole who’s suffering from some routine memory loss and the misogynistic streak that plagued so much of the Silent Generation. The strength of Henriksen’s high-key but nuanced performance is that it’s ultimately too untamed and self-possessed for a diagnosis to be relevant, let alone right.

John (Mortensen) meanwhile seems to have been forged in direct contrast to his dad: He’s a soft-spoken, tightly contained, health-conscious liberal who lives in a nice California home with his Chinese-Hawaiian husband (the inimitable Terry Chen), their adopted Latina daughter (Gabby Velis), and an Obama sticker on the fridge. You can imagine his discomfort when Willis flies into an epithet-filled screaming jags on a red-eye flight out West, a scene that Mortensen punctuates with flashbacks of young John and his dad hunting together.

With a bitter, malformed hint of the associative poetry that ribbons together a memory piece like Terence Davies’ “The Long Day Closes,” Mortensen alternates from a shot Henriksen slouched on an airplane toilet to glimpse of young John playing in the bath with the duck he shot. Later, he will do the same with a scene of Willis taking a shit on a different toilet and snippets of young John playing with a snake.

The film is often loopy and a little perverse in the ways that it looks for the dissonance between the present and the past, but “Falling” — even at its most vertiginous — is told with a consistency of vision that suggests Mortensen knew exactly what he was trying to find. Despite the film’s anti-dramatic strangeness and the constant hostility of Henricksen’s fire and brimstone performance (which bleeds out through a series of never-ending rants against Asians, gays, and women, women, women), every scene is lined with a soft underbelly and sometimes even a light touch of humor. Even the uncomfortable family lunch featuring Laura Linney in full “Love Actually” mode as John’s flustered sister is rooted in something real. Stilted, but real.

Mortensen is nothing if not sincere. “Falling” is such a bespoke piece of filmmaking, and Mortensen so entwined in the fabric of its story, that it’s no surprise to learn that he even composed the delicate score himself. The clumsy flashbacks — some evocative, most prescriptive — are unmoored from either Willis or John’s perspective in a way that makes them feel as if they’re only being remembered by the man behind the camera.

As the film spirals deeper into itself over the course of a dreamy second half that kills time while collapsing it, the specifics of Willis and John’s relationship grow considerably less compelling than the question of what Mortensen was trying to synthesize from them. Is this a portrait of a man trying to defy his father’s enraged idea of masculinity, even when it’s the only part of his father that’s left? Is it a study of how time moves through people, their bodies dissolving even as their minds are borne back ceaselessly against the currents? A fiery climactic showdown entertains both of these readings and any number of others without necessarily entertaining, itself.

More impactful is the non-linear montage that follows, and eventually leads to the film’s sensual, baffling farewell. It’s here, in its most potent and concentrated form, that Mortensen’s unique sense of poetry is liberated from the inertia of a plot that is never quite able to translate it for the rest of us. And it’s here that “Falling” finally gets off the ground.

“Falling” played at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival.  

As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the  safety precautions   provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.

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Lance Henriksen stars as Viggo Mortensen's difficult father in the latter's directing debut, 'Falling.'

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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Having quietly spent years augmenting his acting work with prodigious output in music, poetry and visual arts (not to mention founding a publishing house that champions other artists’ work), Viggo Mortensen finally takes the director’s chair in Falling , a masterful family drama taking a compassionate view of a father whose faults are impossible to ignore. Playing the son who must now care for him through bouts of dementia while absorbing his insults, Mortensen co-stars with Lance Henriksen , a beloved character actor who has almost certainly never had such a meaty part — with 250 roles on his IMDb page, one can’t claim to have watched them all — and who undeniably rises to the occasion. Sundance attendees shouldn’t read anything into programmers’ placement of this artful film at the tail end of the schedule: This will be one of the fest’s most assured directing debuts, and is sure to move viewers whether or not their own families contain a figure as problematic as Henriksen’s Willis Petersen.

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We see Willis first as a young man — played by Sverrir Gudnason ( Borg vs. McEnroe ), who both looks like he could’ve been Mortensen’s father and, as the film weaves through its then-and-now storytelling, captures how genuine paternal pride and love for his wife are poisoned by fundamental emotional flaws. Bringing his wife Gwen (Hannah Gross) and newborn son home from the hospital, he stands in the kitchen, holds the baby still while Gwen fetches a clean diaper, and bends over to gently say, “I’m sorry I brought you into this world. To die.”

The Bottom Line As intelligent and sensitive a directing debut as you'd expect, and a highlight of Henriksen's career.

Moving to the present, Willis has acknowledged (in an increasingly rare clear-headed moment) that he can no longer maintain the upstate New York farm where he lives alone, having chased two wives away. He’s flying to California with his grown son John (we’ll meet John’s sister, played by Laura Linney , later), and is having a confused episode. Willis believes the plane is his old farmhouse; thinks Gwen is upstairs; and disturbs both passengers and crew. John does his best to calm him, and the film flashes back to one of the moments that cemented his sense of filial duty: Willis, out by a lake with the 4-year-old John (Grady McKenzie), patiently helping him shoot his first duck, then cheerfully allowing him to treat the dead bird like a pet until it’s time to cook and eat it.

Mortensen (who also wrote the screenplay) moves back and forth like this throughout — both to gently illustrate Willis’ failings as a husband and father, and to suggest how the old man is experiencing the world today. His confusion about facts is easy to understand, but Mortensen and editor Ronald Sanders use frequent glimpses of the outdoors to add dimension to the character’s emotional life. There’s nothing Malicky about Willis’ connection to nature here, but his obvious affinity for its pleasures makes his inability to connect with humans who love him more poignant.

Willis is a homophobe whose son is gay. As he settles into the home John shares with his husband, Eric (Terry Chen), and daughter Monica (Gabby Velis), he relishes needling the two men, allowing himself to forget, say, that Eric’s ancestry isn’t Japanese. He speaks freely and loudly about sexuality, genially throwing slurs around in a museum or restaurant. He’s also given to casually calling his ex-wives “whores.” He sees betrayal everywhere; his fantasies of being cuckolded may have been self-fulfilling prophesies, and play out for him in an eternal present tense: Both women have died, but he rants as if they’re quietly in the next room, cavorting with the mailman.

Despite his disregard for others’ feelings, Willis is able to connect warmly with the couple’s daughter, who overlooks his inappropriateness and calls him her friend. All these contradictions and more fit seamlessly into Henriksen’s agile, engaging performance; few moviegoers who’ve enjoyed him over the years will be surprised, but many will resent that we, and he, have waited so long for a role like this.

Mortensen, who reportedly only agreed to act in his film to secure financing, makes John uncommon among the many adults we’ve watched cope with difficult parents in indie films. He’s not self-righteous or comically exasperated, doesn’t quietly complain to Eric about his plight, doesn’t rise to the bait his father dangles in front of him. He has fought with him in the past, and grown. Now, he lets insults sail by and patiently adjusts plans to suit Willis’ capriciousness. Clearly, this is because John is more decent than those of us who might cut our losses with a similar family member. But perhaps it’s also because the past is as alive for him as for Willis: Maybe John is still the mop-headed kid who soaked up his father’s approval when he aimed that rifle and shot, and whose father said there was no harm in letting him bathe that beautiful dead duck, dry it by the fire and keep it beside him in bed. Falling doesn’t transform its emotional landscape into a simple question of rejection or forgiveness. It’s comfortable knowing that meanness and affection can exist in the same person, and that tolerance, even when it only flows in one direction, benefits both giver and recipient.

Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Premieres) Production companies: Perceval Pictures, Scythia Films, Zephyr Films Cast: Lance Henriksen, Viggo Mortensen, Terry Chen, Sverrir Gudnason, Hannah Gross, Laura Linney Director/screenwriter/composer: Viggo Mortensen Producers: Viggo Mortensen, Daniel Bekerman, Chris Curling Executive producers: Danielle Virtue, Brian Hayes Currie, Peter Touche, Stephen Dailey, Peter Hampden, Norman Merry Director of photography: Marcel Zyskind Production designer: Carol Spier Costume designer: Anne Dixon Editor: Ronald Sanders Casting director: Deirdre Bowen Sales: Nick Shumaker, Jim Meenaghan, UTA

112 minutes

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Film Review: ‘Falling’

Lance Henriksen gives the performance of his career as an emasculated father facing dementia, but it's writer-director-star Viggo Mortensen who makes the film’s universal themes resonate so strongly.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Viggo Mortensen may have three Oscar nominations to his name, but I get the feeling most folks still don’t take the guy seriously enough. Maybe they don’t realize that, in addition to his acting work, Mortensen is also a painter, a poet, a photographer and a musician. When “The Lord of the Rings” made him rich, he used some of that money to launch an indie publishing label, Perceval Press. And between high-profile projects, he went out of his way to collaborate with international auteurs such as Lisandro Alonso (“Jauja”) and David Oelhoffen (“Far From Men”), comfortably acting in languages other than English (he speaks seven).

So what kind of directorial touch should we expect from such a Renaissance man? Will his first feature turn out to be basic and broad, like the meatball chauffeur he played in “Green Book,” or more poetic, informed by his work with relatively esoteric-minded art-house helmers? The answer, you may not be surprised to learn, is a little of both. More deeply felt than your typical American debut, “ Falling ” is unpretentious and perfectly accessible to mainstream audiences. Mortensen’s patience, his way with actors and his trust in our intelligence are not unlike late-career Eastwood, which isn’t a bad place to be so early in one’s directing career.

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Drawing on his own upbringing while touching on universal themes of family and loss, Mortensen reimagines the relationship with his parents — doting mother, difficult father — through the protective filter of fiction. In the process, the actor reminds that his best work comes from a place of emotional vulnerability. Dad was clearly a piece of work, portrayed here as a scorpion-tempered patriarch who dominated his family for decades (roughly half the movie takes place in flashback, featuring Sverrir Gudnason as Willis, the tough-love father), growing even more difficult with the onset of dementia (as seen in the present, where Lance Henriksen brings the hellfire).

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The film takes place over roughly a week, as Willis leaves his New York farm to seek lodging closer to his son in California — which is like escaping the viper’s nest, only to invite the snake back into one’s home. A consistent challenge whom some may find unbearable, Willis isn’t a villain, at least not in Mortensen’s eyes. His script manages to be tough yet tender while remaining objective enough not to do a “Mommie Dearest”-style hit job on his dad. Selected for the closing-night slot of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, “Falling” feels like a cross between two other Park City premieres of recent vintage: Shia LaBeouf’s transparently therapeutic “Honey Boy” and Paul Dano’s 1960s-set “Wildlife,” in which a bitter divorce serves as the crucible from which an artistic teenager forges his independence.

The movie packs two big surprises: First, Mortensen plays gay, which isn’t the case in real life. The choice serves to heighten the conflict between his character, John, and his conservative father. Second, it gives erstwhile action star Henriksen (Bishop in “Aliens”) an unprecedented opportunity to actually act .

Now pushing 80, Henriksen already looked grizzled by the time he hit 40, and that quality — a raw Marlboro Man toughness written on his face and carved into his cheeks — serves the character well, extending to Willis’ stubborn cigarette habit. He’s similarly unfiltered in his remarks, taunting others with off-color quips about “Negros” and “fairies” and “whores” the way a mean-streak teen tosses cherry bombs, determined to provoke a reaction. “I promised myself I was not going to rise to the bait and engage in another big blowout,” John says at one point.

The film doesn’t give in to such grudges either, preferring a more oblique approach to revealing the source of the scars left by such parenting. If you don’t count Willis’ words to his infant son — “I’m sorry I brought you into this world so you could die” — the first sign that he’s not the great father young John (Grady McKenzie) idealized comes when slightly older John (Etienne Kellici) overhears his mom (Hannah Gross) on the couch sobbing while listening to a recording of Chopin’s Waltz in C Sharp Minor. (Mortensen composed and performed the gentle piano score.)

“Falling” isn’t just about father-son dynamics; it’s also reflective of Mortensen’s relationship with his mother, who died relatively young. While it’s a bit simplistic to imply that John, a “momma’s boy,” should grow up to be gay, it’s clear Mortensen appreciates how difficult coming out would be for someone raised by such an authoritarian (pursuing an artistic career may have been similar for him, whereas John went off and joined the Air Force). The way Mortensen signifies John’s homosexuality, by unabashedly kissing his Asian American partner (Terry Chen) in front of his disapproving and racist dad, makes no big deal of that identity but speaks volumes about the many off-screen arguments that have brought them to this detente.

Meanwhile, Henriksen portrays Willis as someone who, bitter in his old age, rejects John’s help at every turn. It won’t take a mental-health professional to recognize that Willis has control issues, which lends an added dimension of tragedy to his dementia. Mortensen elegantly, intuitively weaves past and present throughout the film, inviting just enough ambiguity for us to wonder whose point of view we’re getting: Do these flashbacks belong to John, or are they windows into Willis’ subjectivity — an attempt by the son to better understand his father?

“Falling” ends with a lovely scene that ought not to be spoiled here. Suffice to say, it pays off a question asked by Willis’ adoptive granddaughter (Gabby Velis), revealing another character’s final words and what was going through that person’s head at the time. Mortensen also carves out a small but impactful role for Laura Linney as John’s adult sister, who does her own version of walking on eggshells around the combustible Willis. It took long enough for someone to entrust a part as tricky as this to Henriksen, whose plunge pays off in Mortensen’s sensitive hands.

Reviewed at United Talent Agency, Jan. 17, 2020. (In Sundance Film Festival.) Running time: 112 MIN.

• Production: A Perceval Pictures, Ingenious Media presentation, in association with HanWay Films, Scythia Films, Zephyr Films. (Int'l sales: UTA Independent Film Group, Los Angeles.) Producers: Viggo Mortensen, Daniel Bekerman, Chris Curling. Executive producers: Danielle Virtue, Brian Hayes Currie, Peter Touche, Stephen Dailey, Peter Hampden.
• Crew: Director, writer: Viggo Mortensen. Camera: Marcel Zyskind. Editor: Ronald Sanders. Music: Mortensen.
• With: Lance Henriksen, Viggo Mortensen, Terry Chen, Laura Linney, , Sverrir Gudnason, Hannah Gross.

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'Falling' Review: Turning the other cheek never felt so tough — or necessary

Viggo mortensen's directorial debut 'falling' offers a more thoughtful take on some of the feel-good themes of his oscar-winning 'green book'..

What to Watch Verdict

Viggo Mortensen's directorial debut offers a nuanced if challenging take on some particularly relevant themes about generational reconciliation.

▪️ Mortensen's work as a director feels natural and unforced, drawing out visual motifs to reflect a mood and the characters' emotions.

▪️ Lance Henriksen throws an admirable weight behind being unlikeable as a bigoted, abusive father.

▪️ Even with a more realistic, even-handed conclusion, watching Henriksen's family endure his abuse becomes tough, even tiresome to watch.

Falling , Viggo Mortensen’s debut as a writer and director, marks the next chapter in his Green Book “bigots are people too” career phase — a noble if privileged pivot for an actor who risks less than some others by bravely empathizing with white men whose opinions remain stuck in a different, prehistoric, era. That this debut comes with a greater measure of nuance than its infamous, Oscar-winning predecessor, comes as more than a little relief; certainly the last thing audiences need right now is a story that confidently asserts a profane, controlling character deserves redemption after driving away two wives and two children.

But if Mortensen embodies the familial struggle many likely have faced (as a matter of personality, health or more recently, politics) to turn the other cheek to such callous and abrasive behavior, Lance Henriksen unapologetically digs his dentures into the meanest and most unpleasant moments of this aging, ailing man’s twilight years, capturing a tightly-held bitterness calcified by a one-two punch of regret and bad health. Meanwhile, behind the camera, his co-star tells a sometimes difficult to watch but often all too relatable story about families unable to sever ties with their worst members, but also unable to make peace with them when they’re around.

Mortensen plays John Peterson, an airline pilot happily living in Los Angeles with his husband Eric (Terry Chen) and daughter Monica (Gabby Velis). His father Willis (Henriksen) is beginning to suffer from dementia, so John brings him to the West Coast to search for a new home where he can be closer to him and his sister Sarah (Laura Linney). Once he arrives, however, Willis’ mental deterioration, along with a lifelong unpredictability — likely undiagnosed bipolar disorder — derails the visit, and spoils their plans to go house hunting. In the meantime, both John and Willis frequently flash back to formative moments during John’s childhood, when his mother Gwen (Hannah Gross) attempted to maintain the peace opposite Willis’ volatile disposition.

Willis’ health continues to decline, so John takes him back to their family farm in upstate New York so he can see a physician he trusts. Diagnosed with colon cancer, John cares for him after surgery and attempts to get him to implement healthier dietary habits. But as Willis begins to feel increasingly controlled — kept not only from the indulgences of fatty food and cigarettes but scolded for his frequent, profane outbursts — their tenuous cooperation with one another eventually explodes, prompting hurtful words, and eventually, a necessary honesty that begins to clear away some of this father and son’s simmering, long-held resentments.

As an actor, Mortensen often plays characters walking a tightrope between warring factions — if not quite a wild card, a figure of mystery whose motivations and allegiances remain unclear until a pivotal moment. If John Peterson is more resolutely kind, pre-emptively steeling himself for the next insult or indignity he’ll suffer from him father, the story he tells here as screenwriter and director serves the same purpose as those earlier roles: jostling between childhood flashbacks and a seemingly calmer adulthood, each scene becomes a showcase in anticipation to see what Willis will (or won’t) do in order to disrupt the moment, much less terrorize his family. Mortensen skillfully avoids making him a cartoon bully or externalizing his menace impulses through abuse, instead portraying a man who possesses kindness but doles it out not just sparingly, but woefully inconsistently. Inheriting a pattern of verbal and mental abuse from his own father, Willis maintains a thread of tyrannical paternal control that he demonstrates increasingly arbitrarily, and as a powerless septuagenarian, manifests itself by controlling every experience by destroying it with bitterness and cruelty.

Mortensen has more patience with Willis as John than most people would, but he shows what a struggle that is for the character, and hints deftly at the struggles, including substance abuse, that he’s faced to overcome his darker feelings about his father. The fact that John is gay is largely irrelevant except in that it provides a cudgel for his father, and evidences the sharp divide between generations of the Peterson family. I’d be curious to know if Jonathan Banks might have been Mortensen’s first choice for Willis, since the character feels like one that would perhaps slightly more effortlessly be in the actor’s wheelhouse than Henriksen’s performance suggests, but Henriksen fights fearlessly against likeability as this spiteful, lonely, antagonistic man may not always be purposely driving away the very few people who still love him, but it’s often enough to have trouble telling the difference. Meanwhile, a brief appearance by Linney as John’s sister Sarah offers important clues about the way that this family coped, or didn’t, with his lifelong abuse.

Ultimately, Mortensen’s argument for compassion for our family members — even the ones we’d rather not see, and who probably no one should — feels more admirable here than the platitudes that glued together truth and fiction in Green Book , not the least of which because this is a more thoughtful, understated film than that one. But what it did have was more charm, or more relief from those “tough” moments; Mortensen’s approach here lacks even the levity of the old man’s pathetic ridiculousness as John and his family sit uncomfortably through one table-clearing rant after another. And so, as a metaphor transplanted onto an aging father’s medical condition, Falling offers an interesting perspective particularly in the immediacy of the post-Trump presidency, as tempers supposedly cool and fences have the potential to be mended. If nothing else, Mortensen’s film suggests that against all transgressions, past and present, people can offer forgiveness, repair deep wounds, and even achieve a calm and mutual grace. But perhaps unwittingly, it also recognizes that until you get there, the experience is probably not going to be a lot of fun to sit through.

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Todd Gilchrist is a Los Angeles-based film critic and entertainment journalist with more than 20 years’ experience for dozens of print and online outlets, including Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly and Fangoria. An obsessive soundtrack collector, sneaker aficionado and member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Todd currently lives in Silverlake, California with his amazing wife Julie, two cats Beatrix and Biscuit, and several thousand books, vinyl records and Blu-rays.

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Review: Viggo Mortensen’s feature directing debut, ‘Falling,’ is a problematic journey

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Viggo Mortensen is a terrific actor with a wealth of memorable screen work to his credit. Unfortunately, his feature directorial debut, “Falling,” does not, er, fall into that category, though it’s not for lack of trying: He also wrote, starred in, produced and scored this problematic film.

It’s a grim, oddly misguided attempt to tell the story of the fractious relationship between a gay airline pilot, John (Mortensen), and his thoroughly insufferable dad, Willis ( Lance Henriksen ), as the obstreperous senior sinks into dementia.

Set, for some reason, in 2009, the film finds upstate New York farmer Willis visiting John and his husband, Eric (Terry Chen), who’s a nurse, and their adopted daughter, Mönica (Gabby Velis), in Los Angeles. John wants Willis, who can no longer properly take care of himself, to move nearby, though that’s got disaster written all over it — as does most everything else that involves the black-hearted bigot.

Starting with an excruciating cross-country plane ride, in which John accompanies his father west, Willis proves himself to be a crude, misogynistic, homophobic, even sadistic clod likely to erupt at any moment. This is partly due to his withering mental state, but — as the film’s many flashbacks to John’s bucolic childhood reveal — it’s not hard to imagine a direct line from the simmering younger Willis (Sverrir Gudnason) to the boiled-over kettle he would become.

Still, hints of his own difficult daddy aside, why is he like this? Willis is largely a surface character — a blunt collection of incriminating adjectives and vile stereotypes rather than a fully dimensional character. Veteran actor Henriksen tears into the role, but a little goes a long way.

A similar lack of dimension applies to John, whose earlier adult years and, most pivotally, what had to have been a horrific coming-out to his father, go unexplored.

As if the present-day Willis needs any more fodder for his verbal venom, Mortensen surrounds him with a steady stream of potential targets: the Muslim women at the airport; the heavily tatted Chinese Hawaiian American Eric; Willis’ blue-haired grandson and goth-ish granddaughter (the children of his quavery daughter, Sarah, played by Laura Linney ); then-new President Barack Obama; and many more, even if the Latinx Mönica somehow escapes his wrath. This approach proves as clunky and obvious as much else here.

And did we really need to endure the prostate exam (cue the gay slurs — again) Willis receives at the hands of his purple-gloved physician (filmmaker David Cronenberg , a frequent Mortensen collaborator)? Talk about obvious.

Mortensen , playing more than 10 years younger than his actual age, nearly vanishes amid John’s deeply stifled anger and forced calm; when he finally explodes, it feels like too little too late. The stalwart actor is simply miscast and not because he’s straight; he just brings nothing singular to his underwritten role. In addition, there’s no real chemistry between Mortensen and the similarly low-key Chen, which also doesn’t serve to sell Mortensen in the part — or Chen in his, for that matter.

(When criticized for casting himself as John, which was apparently required to help finance the film, Mortensen has spoken a bit cagily about his own sexuality. Whatever he’s been trying to say, it still didn’t enhance his performance.)

Ultimately, this grueling, overlong picture — think a chamber piece but with multiple characters and locations — never zeroes in on what it wants us to think or feel about Willis or John. But if it’s sympathy, it doesn’t get there.

If the thorny dynamic between a beleaguered child and a dementia-stricken dad is of interest, better to wait for Florian Zeller’s fine film “The Father,” with Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman, which will be released at the end of the month.

'Falling'

Rated: R, for language throughout including offensive slurs, crude sexual references, brief sexuality and nudity Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes Playing: Available Feb. 5 on digital and VOD

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'Falling' review: Viggo Mortensen excels in heart-piercing drama

Mortensen also wrote, scored and co-produced “Falling."

Get ready to discover a new side to Viggo Mortensen, a three-time Oscar nominee.

The 62-year-old multi-talented actor stands out "Falling," his directorial debut. The heart-piercing human drama displays all the traits that define Mortensen as an actor: strength, sensitivity and offbeat humor.

Mortensen, who also wrote, scored and co-produced "Falling," excels as John Peterson, a gay man coping with a homophobic father plagued by dementia. The ornery old man, Willis, is played by veteran actor Lance Henriksen, who has starred in "Aliens" and played a vampire leader in "Near Dark." Henriksen delivers the fullest and finest performance of his career.

MORE: 'The Midnight Sky' review: George Clooney's film finds its heart in its actors

Lovable is not a quality you'd apply to Willis, who's alienated two wives by calling them "whores" and railing against "fairies" and any racial minority you can name. Yet his pilot son is unstinting in his monk-like patience. In a frantic, late-night scene on a jet flight, Willis, lost in his own head, thrashes around in the passenger cabin until John settles him down. The panicky confusion of both father and son is vividly and movingly rendered by Mortensen.

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Willis, who knows he can no longer care for himself on a remote farm in upstate New York, moves into the SoCal home that John shares with his husband, Eric (Terry Chen), and their daughter Monica (Gabby Velis). As expected, Willis opens fire, especially when Willis' daughter Sarah, poignantly played by Laura Linney, visits with her teen children.

"Why do you ruin everything," asks Sarah's son, whose dyed hair sends Willis into insult overdrive. "I promised myself I was not going to rise to the bait," says John, whose words make it clear he has done just that many times before.

Why would this cruel curmudgeon inspire Mortensen to make a movie about him? The answer is complicated and intensely personal. Though the film is fiction, Mortensen has admitted to dealing with the pain of parental dementia. It's apparent from the start that Mortensen is not a filmmaker willing to spell things out or tell audiences how to think. Instead, his film flashes to moments from the past that illustrate a world of hurt for both men.

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There's a telling moment when young Willis (Sverrir Gudnason) brings wife Gwen (a lovely Hannah Gross) and the newborn John home to the farm and this young father whispers to his son, "I'm sorry I brought you into this world -- to die." It's evident that Willis has suffered in ways the film only infers. Later, Willis is out on a lake teaching 4-year-old John (Grady McKenzie) how to shoot his first duck and shows a surprising tenderness when the boy begs to bathe and sleep with the animal. Nature seems to bring out of a softer side in Willis that he is tragically unable to transfer to humans.

To his credit, Mortensen never tries to excuse or redeem Willis. Instead, like the tolerant John, Mortensen offers understanding as perhaps the only viable path to ending a cycle of abuse. "Falling" is a movie that stays in your head a long time after its quietly devastating final scene. As Mortensen intended, it takes a piece out of you.

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Rent Falling on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

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As messy and complex as the relationship at its center, Falling 's repetitive nature can be taxing, but its heart is clearly in the right place.

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Summary John (Viggo Mortensen) lives with his partner, Eric (Terry Chen), and their daughter, Monica (Gabby Velis), in California, far from the traditional rural life he left behind years ago. His father, Willis (Lance Henriksen), a headstrong man from a bygone era, lives alone on the isolated farm where John grew up. Willis’s mind is declining, ... Read More

Directed By : Viggo Mortensen

Written By : Viggo Mortensen

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John peterson, lance henriksen, laura linney, sverrir gudnason, young willis, hannah gross, carina battrick, sarah (4 - 6 yrs), sarah (11 yrs), gabby velis, bracken burns, liam crescitelli, john (baby), luca crescitelli, grady mckenzie, john (4 yrs), etienne kellici, john (9 - 11 yrs), william healy, john (16 yrs), ella jonas farlinger, piers bijvoet, david cronenberg, dr. klausner, henry mortensen, sergeant saunders, critic reviews.

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Falling Review: Viggo Mortensen & Lance Henriksen Deliver Career-Bests

By Grant Hermanns

Viggo Mortensen as John Peterson

William Healy as 15-year-old John Peterson

Etienne Kellici as 10-year-old John Peterson

Grady McKenzie as 5-year-old John Peterson

Lance Henriksen as Willis Peterson

Sverrir Gudnason as Young Willis Peterson

Laura Linney as Sarah Peterson

Ava Kozelj as 10-year-old Sarah Peterson

Carina Battrick as 5-year-old Sarah Peterson

Hannah Gross as Gwen Peterson

Terry Chen as Eric Peterson

Piers Bijvoet as Will

Ella Jonas Farlinger as Paula

Written & Directed by Viggo Mortensen

Click here to rent or purchase  Falling !

Falling Review:

The subject of dementia is one so fraught with sadness and unknowingness that it’s often tackled on screen in one of two ways: Humor or Tragedy. While the former path is certainly a feasible one, as humor is a coping mechanism for sadness, it often leads to unfair or disingenuous portrayals of the very real mental issue many face as they get older, whereas the latter approach generally bashes a viewer over the head with the message to sympathize with those suffering from it. While Viggo Mortensen’s  Falling , might not find the right balance of both worlds, it does offer a far more honest and raw portrayal of the disease that sees its debuting writer/director/star and co-star Lance Henriksen delivering career-best performances.

John (Viggo Mortensen) lives with his partner, Eric (Terry Chen), and their daughter, Mónica (Gabby Velis), in California, far from the traditional rural life he left behind years ago. John’s father, Willis (Lance Henriksen), a headstrong man from a bygone era, lives alone on the isolated farm where John grew up. Willis is in the early stages of dementia, making running the farm on his own increasingly difficult, so John brings him to stay at his California home so that he and his sister Sarah (Laura Linney) might help him find a place near them to relocate to. Unfortunately, their best intentions ultimately run up against Willis’s adamant refusal to change his way of life in the slightest.

Unlike most films centered around characters suffering from dementia, the film takes an interesting narrative path by illustrating how Willis was during John’s childhood and up to the present day, but instead of a kind-hearted father whose struggle against the disease sees him devolve into a despicable character, we’re shown that he’s always been problematic and it presents a more compelling question for the viewer. How far does unconditional love for a parent go when they give you no avenue to connect with?

Drawing from his own experiences, Mortensen certainly doesn’t hold back in crafting the character of Willis, delivering a thoroughly conservative, wildly racist and homophobic misogynist whose time has long past. At times, it greatly works to create some gripping and emotionally heated moments between John and his father, as well as Eric, Sarah and the rest of the extended family, but admittedly there are times it becomes hard to watch. It’s undeniably an honest portrayal of those who exhibited these behaviors prior to succumbing to dementia, which only exacerbates and brings forth these negative traits more frequently and without filter, but at times the writing does draw dangerously near depicting Willis as a caricature more so than a genuinely complex or flawed person.

This is frequently saved, however, by Mortensen’s direction and the incredible performance from Henriksen in the role. The 80-year-old actor holds nothing back bringing Willis to life, delivering every harsh criticism, horrible slur and occasional expression of love and heartbreak with such a truthful abandon it’s hard to completely hate or feel unsympathetic in watching his spiral. Be it John’s endless attempts to help his ailing father or the rare moments indicating he’s really hurting deep down from a life of abandonment, the way the story keeps characters from endlessly turning their backs on him helps create a similar connection in audiences to Willis and keeping a sliver of hope alive that maybe he will come around.

While it might feel a little familiar or predictable in moments and Willis occasionally strays into caricature territory, Viggo Mortensen’s directorial debut nonetheless proves to be a powerful, beautifully shot and incredibly performed honest portrayal of dementia that establishes the three-time Oscar nominee as a directorial talent certainly worth waiting for.

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Falling Review

04 Dec 2020

At the end of Falling — the directorial debut of Viggo Mortensen , from his own screenplay — there is a dedication to Mortensen’s brothers. It’s a telling credit: suggesting that this often heart-breaking drama about a complex relationship between a father and son is at least semi-autobiographical, resonating across a whole family; and also, that even if Mortensen’s real-life experiences were half as gruelling as those depicted in the film — and they get pretty bloody gruelling — his overriding instinct is still to demonstrate his love.

That seems to be Falling ’s philosophy, the square it is trying to circle: understanding and expressing the compassion for a parent that is not reciprocated. John (Mortensen) spends the duration of the film patiently caring for his elderly father, Willis ( Lance Henriksen ), helping him make the move from his farm in the rural Northeast to the warmer climes of the West Coast. But his help is never met with anything less than hostility. California, for example, is described by Willis as a place for “cocksuckers and flagburners”.

Henriksen’s performance is among his very best in a 60-plus-year career.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Willis is a bit of an asshole. We learn in flashbacks of his emotional (and sometimes physical) abuse, only exacerbated by the contradictions and confusions of dementia. He’s a gift of a character, hungrily accepted by Henriksen and Sverrir Gudnason (as young Willis). The latter is decent, but it’s Henriksen you won’t be able to take your eyes off, his bullish screen presence and booming gravel voice delivering scorched-earth missives to anyone within earshot. There’s a teeth-gritted tension to his constant unpredictability.

Not a huge amount happens. Aside from an unexpected cameo where David Cronenberg gives a prostate exam, it seems designed as an acting showcase as much as anything, and Falling is most compelling when it plays like a kind of father-son Frost/Nixon , where Willis tries to bait his children. That it’s met with a level-headed diplomacy from John seems to be a testament to unconditional love, in the face of all rationality. It makes the rare moments of tenderness from Willis — such as an uncharacteristically touching concession during a hunting trip — hit hard, an oasis of kindness in a desert of hostility.

Two things are remarkable, really: one is Henriksen’s performance, among his very best in a 60-plus-year career. The other is Mortensen’s seemingly instant aptitude as a filmmaker. He has a clear eye for composition and staging; he’s visually economic but sometimes quite daring; and his script is refreshingly non-linear and rarely goes in the direction you expect. This is not A Dementia Film, as the subject matter might imply, and it offers no easy solutions for difficult questions, or obvious resolutions.

The final few minutes of the film seem to emphasise this, culminating in a coda that’s as surreal and confounding as it is poignant. As an actor, Mortensen has always managed to gently surprise, and it looks like he plans to do so as director, too.

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Viggo Mortensen can't save the punishing dementia drama Falling : Review

This month, improbably, will see the release of two dramas about the devastating effects of caring for a parent with dementia: The Father , starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman , and Falling , Viggo Mortensen 's directorial debut. It may be a favor to Falling that it arrives first, because the film suffers in almost every other way by comparison.

Mortensen — who also produced and penned the script — plays John, a Los Angeles airline pilot with a lovely-looking life that includes a supportive husband ( Jessica Jones ' Terry Chen) and young daughter (Gabby Velis). John is committed to the task of moving his widowed dad, Willis (Lance Henriksen) from his remote New York farm into warmer retirement in California, though Willis tends to forget from moment to moment that that plan exists.

What he knows ebbs and flows, but one thing is consistent: Willis is a mean son of a bitch. He has many other words for that; in fact, he has words for everything, nearly all of them lewd, profane, or spectacularly cruel. Not that things were ever so different, we learn in a cascading series of flashbacks. Even before illness took any filter away, Willis (portrayed as a younger man by Swedish actor Sverrir Gudnason) was always stormy, an emotional weather system whose mercurial moods held constant sway over his long-suffering wife ( Mindhunter 's Hannah Gross) and their two small children.

Henriksen, with his granite cheekbones and hard gaze, often plays characters carved from extremes. But his endless spittle-flecked rants here — he dismisses Barack Obama as "that negro you voted for," regales his grandchildren with explicit tales of "whores" and "fairies," and showers his son in gay epithets so outmoded they might actually be mothballed — aren't illuminating, just vicious.

Faced with a protagonist who is less a person than a walking Archie Bunker insult generator, gifted actors like Gross and Laura Linney (as John's grown sister) are mostly left to languish in the blast radius, their default mode a pained rictus of shock and dismay. Even Mortensen, whose quiet magnetism usually fills the screen, recedes into a sort of polite paralysis whenever Henriksen's raging patriarch is near — so absent from himself that a single bloodletting scene near the end doesn't bring anywhere near the catharsis it should.

The film (out Friday) is otherwise well acted and nicely shot, but Falling 's bigger problem, aside from a sluggish narrative and the constant general unpleasantness of being in Willis' presence, is that we've seen so many bad dads like this in cinema before: Bullies, narcissists, monstrous abusers. Barring any greater lessons on motivation or forgiveness, the movie becomes little more than an endurance test; one far easier — at least for the viewer — to fall away from than to stay. Grade: C

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‘Falling’ Movie Review – TIFF 2020

Intentionally or not, there’s inherently something personal about movies directed by their main actors. While some folks are quick to denounce them as vanity projects or effortful attempts to inflate egos, the better ones — or, at least, the more interesting ones — tend to give us a more pointed look at these well-known performers. They shape their public images and help viewers understand how they see themselves and how they want us to see them. That doesn’t mean they’re always investing, but these types of projects can provide intriguing new looks into the stars we’ve grown accustomed to seeing. They can be glossy self-portraits or memoirs by way of cinema. They can be a window into their souls and an earnest chance to express their most creative self. But even the most self-reflective works don’t always work out.

Viggo Mortensen makes his screenwriting and directorial debut with Falling , a heavy (and sometimes heavy-handed) family drama in which Mortensen also stars as John, a mild-mannered pilot who takes a week off from work in order to spend time with his critical, outspoken, set-in-his-ways father (Lance Henriksen), a brittle senior who is never afraid to yell, demean, and belittle anyone and everyone around him. John and his family, including his husband (Terry Chen), his adopted daughter (Gabby Velis), and his sister (Laura Linney), all try their best to put up with the old man’s endless torments. After all, it’s not looking good for his future. He’s a relic of the past who haunts his family — even as he’s still among the living (if only for so long). His disgruntled children do everything they can to keep their decades-spanning feelings of anguish, remorse, and frustration toward their father to themselves, but Mortensen’s moody movie is unafraid to turn up the dial until it’s almost unbearable for anyone (them or us) to want to spend even a minute longer in this man’s narrow-minded company.

I applaud Mortensen’s firm conviction, especially as a first-time writer/director, for sticking to his guns and focusing so intently on this intentionally despicable, demented character. In a similarly committed portrayal, Henrisken heaps vile, disgust, and many four-lettered insults without even a passing second thought, and his dedication to the character makes this awful man come to life in intentionally very unpleasant ways. The actor trusts his director and co-star and allows himself to be cloaked in this tempered old man’s pitiful existence. He matches the restless spirit of the movie, one that’s true to its mind and only fears conventional approach. The results make for an intriguing, yet also highly inconsistent film that never comfortably finds its own groove. Much like his on-screen avatar, our director doesn’t really know what to do with this man. As a filmmaker, he’s given a great, dedicated performance, but Mortensen seems unsure how it can or should service the story he’s trying to tell with this belabored movie.

It’s both admirable and self-destructive that Falling never follows any sort of traditional story path. Never content to settle for being a modern father-son drama, Mortensen’s first feature includes many period-based flashback sequences which litter and inarticulately inform the film’s first half, though they’re oddly less frequent in the second half. Likewise, there are several impressionistic, dream-like sequences later in the movie which attempt to get us inside the unraveling mind of our cantankerous lead, but they’re all too infrequent and impartial to provide meaningful insight or reflection.

There’s an unmistakable desire on Mortensen’s part to explore the fragile nature of one’s history and mortality in unflinching regard. The film feels personal in the sense that it feels like the writer/director/actor is attempting to figure something out about the human condition through his work on this film. Hopefully, it proved to be cathartic and meaningful, though that explorative process doesn’t always result in the smoothest works of art. Mortensen’s early hand as a filmmaker doesn’t have the assurance yet to pull off its more abrasive inclinations, despite his confidence otherwise, and its odd bits of sweetness can feel jarringly misplaced and radically uneven. There are a few moments when Mortensen finds his stride and makes an introspective, if rather unbecoming, examination of what it means to care for our elders, even when they’ve refused (or still refuse) to do their part to raise us into decent or orderly people. The desire is ultimately admirable, in a sense, but the approach is often messy. It’s never half-hearted, but it’s less than graceful. These unsteady waters need a vigilant eye, and Mortensen just doesn’t have what it takes yet to pull off this kind of uninviting bit of film therapy — assuming, of course, that this story relates to his life in any literal way (reports have claimed that the movie is based on his history of caring for his elderly parents, but it’s unclear how much these characters are molded after his parental figures).

It’s intriguing that Viggo Mortensen has worked with some of our finest working directors, including Peter Jackson, Peter Weir, Ridley Scott, and David Cronenberg (who makes a cameo as a doctor), yet his directorial style doesn’t feel reminiscent of any of his peers. That’s not a criticism but rather an observation. Where so many actors try to mimic the works of past collaborators, Mortensen appears dead-set on making his own cocktail. The movie isn’t consistent enough to have its own style, but it showcases a first-time director who doesn’t simply want to do what’s expected of him. Will he make another movie as a director, and will it be in this vein? Who knows?

Hopefully, Mortensen made the movie he desired to make here, even if it might not connect to many outside viewers. It’s encouraging that he went forward with such an undeniably challenging and emotionally open movie during his first time in the director’s chair, but it’s all-the-more disappointing that it doesn’t come together in many connected ways. It’s hard to doubt his sincerity, and this movie does feel like an extension of his creative self — if, sometimes, in ways that are hard to read or fully engage with. There’s a poeticism and a vibrant sense of personal necessity to this movie that makes it hard to dismiss, but there’s too much in Falling that fails to invest an unsettled audience outside of clear attempts to hate this brash and arrogant old man. The true irony of Falling is that, for as much as Mortensen uses this movie as a platform for self-exploration, we hardly get a revealing or dynamic look at his own character in the movie. Too often, he is left to be the punching bag for his father’s string of criticism and angered political, social, gender, and racial views. For as liberated as Mortensen can seem by the weight lifted by this project, the film itself often falls under its own strained inability to give us a proper understanding of what it wants to say and what it hopes to glean from the fallibility of the human condition.

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Will Ashton

Will Ashton is the co-founder and co-host of Cinemaholics. His writing can also be found on Collider, The Playlist, The Young Folks, Slate, Indiewire, Insider, and several other publications. He's just here to have a good time.

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When many of us think of vacationing on the Mediterranean, the first things that come to mind might be the gorgeous blue-green crystalline waters, the picturesque villages anchored on the shoreline, and the many variations of seafood fare available within walking distance. Perhaps that’s part of what inspired rockstar John Allman (Harry Connick Jr.) to escape the pressures of the music business to catch a little rest and relaxation on the scenic island of Cyprus. Unfortunately, he’s confronted with a more serious problem when the house on a cliff he purchased turns out to be a destination for people looking to end their life. As he tries to connect with other locals about what he can do to stop the practice, he meets an aspiring singer named Melina ( Ali Fumiko Whitney ) and her mother, Sia ( Agni Scott ), an accomplished doctor on the island who once had a relationship with John many years before – and who now has another chance at love.

Writer-director Stelana Kliris follows the well-worn beats of a romantic comedy with her follow-up to her 2014 feature debut, “Committed.” In “Find Me Falling,” she gives the audience a few surprises and instead follows a predictable story of a long-delayed romantic reconnection featuring two handsome leads. However, the subplot about suicide just outside John’s doorstep feels strangely glib, dampening the mood of this escapist rom com from the jump: the movie is called “Find Me Falling” afterall. In some scenes, this plot detail is played for laughs, like when an exasperated John scolds a man looking downcast and heading to the cliff, “Now is not a good day to die!” Embarrassed, the man turns back, and John continues his emotional conversation with Sia. Other moments are much more sympathetic, like when John coaxes a scared young woman off the edge and promises to help her, but it’s a tonal whiplash from nights spent at a music-filled taverna, getting sunburnt on the beach, or reigniting a long-lost romantic flame.

As a tired rockstar looking to get away from it all, Harry Connick Jr. looks a little too polished but acts appropriately tired by all the small town mishegoss he finds on arrival. He seems embarrassed that people recognize him and is maybe one of the most unpretentious rock stars ever written for a movie. As Sia, Agni Scott plays the part of the accomplished woman who soldiered on with her career and single motherhood well, and she struts through the film with a stylish sense of nonchalance. It’s a performance that’s almost too cool and aloof, because as their characters may verbally pine for each other, the physical chemistry feels less evident, and their moments of passion look less exciting than some of their arguments.

However, Kliris’s script doesn’t just center on the film’s two lovebirds. She builds out Sia’s relationship with her daughter, Melina; her concerned sister Koula ( Lea Maleni ), who is weary of this dashing stranger who’s returned to Cyprus for what may be more than a change of scenery; and the family’s matriarch Marikou (Aggeliki Filippidou), who is always on hand to lend an ear, share her wisdom with her family, and cool tempers between family members. There’s a loving familial dynamic that develops alongside the romance that also grounds the story in the culture and place, not just using it as a narrative backdrop. Even Captain Manoli ( Tony Demetriou ) plays a vital role in giving John a tour of the town, introducing him to the taverna where John sees Sia for the first time in years, and has his own issues that John then helps him and his family in return.

By the end, “Find Me Falling” lands on uneven ground. It’s as if this lighthearted romantic comedy has its frothy bubbles burst by the sudden encroachment of dramatic interruptions and uninspired pop music and lyrics (John’s big hit is called “Girl on the Beach” and the song does not sound better than the title). It’s an odd choice that may affect some viewer’s expectations for a frivolous getaway romance, like using lime for a Greek dish that calls for lemon. It changes the profile of the movie, leaving an aftertaste that feels slightly off an otherwise decent meal.

Monica Castillo

Monica Castillo is a critic, journalist, programmer, and curator based in New York City. She is the Senior Film Programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a contributor to  RogerEbert.com .

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Review: 'Falling,' by T.J. Newman

FICTION: A thrilling debut in which a pilot must crash his plane to save his family.

By Malcolm Forbes

Early into "Falling," and not long into a flight from Los Angeles to New York, the pilot-protagonist Bill Hoffman takes a calculated risk and confides in a hushed tone to his friend. "Jo," he whispers. "We have a situation." Which is something of an understatement.

For Bill's tricky situation is the novel's terrifying premise. His wife and children have been kidnapped by terrorists. If he wants to save their lives he must crash his plane, killing all 149 people onboard.

Phoenix-based T.J. Newman had her eureka moment for her first novel while working as a flight attendant. Unable to shake the idea, she went on to write a lot of the book on cross-country red-eye flights when passengers were sleeping. She sent it out to 41 literary agents, all of whom turned it down. The 42nd agent took her on, submitted it to an editor, and secured a lucrative deal. A much-rejected manuscript has become one of the most talked-about debuts of the year.

Like all good thrillers, "Falling" gets off to a dramatic start and maintains its momentum. Twenty-five pages in and Bill, cocooned in his cockpit, is jolted by an image on his laptop of his wife, Carrie, strapped with an explosive suicide vest. An e-mail instructs him to put on his headphones. The man speaking to him appears on the screen clad in a similar vest and holding a detonator. Bill's 10-year-old son and 10-month-old daughter make up the other captives. His instructions, though hard to take in, are short and to the point: "Crash your plane, or I kill your family. The choice is yours."

Stymied by his dilemma, Bill turns to doughty flight attendant Jo. She manages to get word out to her nephew Theo, an FBI agent whose reputation is in tatters. Seizing an opportunity to redeem himself, Theo goes off in pursuit of the terrorist. But Bill's nemesis remains one step ahead. Not only does he prove both elusive and destructive on the ground, but his unknown mole on the plane means he is also capable of wreaking havoc in the air.

Newman's various narrative strands resemble high-voltage live wires. One tense predicament replaces another, from poison gas attacks to mutinous passengers to orders to kill the co-pilot or shoot down the plane. The suspense is heightened by the fact that the terrorist is not open to negotiation. He isn't after money or a prisoner exchange. "All I want is to see what a good man — a good American man — does when he's in a no-win situation."

Sporadic flashbacks to the past are a distraction and clunky clichés mar some of the dialogue ("Your badge is mine," growls Theo's boss). But these are mere niggles when set against the book's considerable strengths, not least its frenetic pace, numerous cliffhangers and one almighty twist. Ignore the blizzard of hype, suspend all disbelief and enjoy the ride.

Malcolm Forbes has written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist and the New Republic. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Falling By: T.J. Newman. Publisher: Avid Reader Press, 304 pages, $28.

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The falling.

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Common Sense Media Review

British girls' school drama has sex, trauma, adult themes.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Falling is a British period drama about a 1960s school girl, Lydia (Maisie Williams), who must deal with increasingly strange and traumatic events, including a fainting epidemic at her school. Lydia is troubled but has good intentions. Her clashes with her teacher and her mother,…

Why Age 15+?

Couples are shown having sex. Male nudity from rear in one scene. Frequent discu

Characters collapse and pass out for mysterious reasons. One dies. Symptoms incl

Teens drink alcohol, in moderation, including one who may be pregnant. Adult cha

Any Positive Content?

Lydia and Abbie are close friends who care for one another and get along well wi

The majority of the cast are young, White-British females with some gender and e

Caring for others and the power of friendship. However, the movie's events are d

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Couples are shown having sex. Male nudity from rear in one scene. Frequent discussion of sex, including losing your virginity and simulating oral sex. Sexual metaphors in other dialogue. Character unbuttons their shirt, exposing their bra. Implied masturbation. Sex scene between siblings.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Characters collapse and pass out for mysterious reasons. One dies. Symptoms include vomiting, nosebleeds, tremors, and hyperventilating. Character pricked with pin, draws blood. Minor scuffles and altercations, including someone being threatened with scissors. Suicide attempt when someone tries to jump from a tree into a river -- they survive. Reference and flashbacks to a rape that resulted in a birth.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Teens drink alcohol, in moderation, including one who may be pregnant. Adult characters smoke cigarettes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Lydia and Abbie are close friends who care for one another and get along well with their peers. Lydia wants to fight perceived injustices, but can be erratic in her approach. The movie's authority figures are repressed and distant, partially reflecting its 1960s setting.

Diverse Representations

The majority of the cast are young, White-British females with some gender and ethnic diversity among the supporting cast. Female writer/director. Teenage school girls discuss and begin to experiment with sex, and there are brief discussions around mental health.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Messages

Caring for others and the power of friendship. However, the movie's events are deliberately bizarre and confusing for both its characters and the audience.

Parents need to know that The Falling is a British period drama about a 1960s school girl, Lydia ( Maisie Williams ), who must deal with increasingly strange and traumatic events, including a fainting epidemic at her school. Lydia is troubled but has good intentions. Her clashes with her teacher and her mother, Eileen ( Maxine Peake ) can partly be attributed to her difficult home life and a tragedy that strikes at school. There is a brief discussion about her mental health with a doctor. Sex is a common theme in the movie, with several non-explicit sex scenes, including one between siblings. A female character shows her underwear and a male character is seen naked from the waist down from the rear while having sex. There are also discussions about having sex, including someone briefly simulating oral sex and another scene where it's implied a boy is masturbating. Flashbacks and references to a rape. Altercations include someone being threatened with scissors, while multiple characters display symptoms including vomiting, nosebleeds, tremors, and hyperventilating. A character tries to end their life by jumping into a river, but they survive. Teens are seen drinking but not to excess, while adult characters smoke at home and at work, reflecting the 1960s time period. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

THE FALLING follows Lydia ( Maisie Williams ) as she navigates a fainting epidemic after a tragic event at her all-girls school.

Is It Any Good?

This is a bold and occasionally captivating movie that never quite seems to decide what it wants to be about. The Falling traces the impact of a bizarre fainting epidemic that disrupts life in and around a 1960s British girls' school. Writer and director Carol Morley imagines a neat twist on the coming-of-age drama, but struggles to find a way to nurture its spectacle, to the point where characters treat teen girls fainting on mass as a tiring inconvenience. This leaves its talented cast fumbling between black comedy and drama, as well as competing metaphors for declining mental health, sexual awakenings, and grief.

Williams found time in-between seasons of Game of Thrones to portray the increasingly distressed Lydia, who suffers a frosty relationship with her mother Eileen ( Maxine Peake ) and the indelible marks left on her by her more mature best friend, Abbie ( Florence Pugh ). Lydia's troubles mimic the audience's, as the movie quickly runs out of plot and bounces her from one underdeveloped conflict to another. The Falling also suffers from the release of another film, The Fits , two years later, which leans on a similar central premise but with a leaner story and so to better effect.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how The Falling portrayed sex and relationships? Was it affectionate? Respectful? Parents, talk to your teens about your own values regarding sex and relationships.

Do you think the fainting epidemic in the school symbolized anything? If so, what?

Discuss Lydia's changing behavior. Why did she become frustrated with the adults in her life and how did it affect her mental health and well-being?

Talk about the 1960s setting. What was different compared to today?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 7, 2015
• On DVD or streaming : August 9, 2016
• Cast : Maisie Williams , Maxine Peake , Florence Pugh
• Director : Carol Morley
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Female actors
• Studios : Cinedigm Entertainment Group , Tubitv
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 102 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : August 14, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Movie review: ‘Alien Romulus’ takes the beloved franchise in a horrifying new direction

• August 20, 2024
• Nick DeSantis

Cailee Spaeny, left, as Rain and David Jonsson as Andy in “Alien: Romulus.” Credit: Murray Close/20th Century Studios via TNS

In 1979, the world was introduced to Ridley Scott’s chest-bursting franchise, “Alien.” 

The original film has become a horror classic, and its sequel — aptly titled “Aliens” and directed by James Cameron — has become a sci-fi action classic. 

Every new entry in the franchise attempts to live up to these two beloved films, with some coming close and some falling entirely flat. 

Luckily, for long-time fans, “Alien: Romulus” provides some of the best scares and action sequences the franchise has seen in years.

The film follows space colonist Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) and her synthetic humanoid brother Andy (David Jonsson) as they join a crew of colonists scavenging an abandoned space station, where they discover much more than initially anticipated.

The “Alien” films are known for their powerful female leads, most notably actress Sigourney Weaver’s iconic performance(s) as Ellen Louise Ripley, and Spaeny does an exceptional job of recreating Weaver’s fearless energy from the original films. 

Jonsson also delivers a standout performance. In prior films, synthetic characters — artificially intelligent beings that speak and act similarly to humans — have been cold individuals that follow orders from the mysterious Weyland-Yutani Corporation, a company that oversees all synthetic technology. 

Synthetic characters have historically occupied antagonistic roles; however, Jonsson is a protagonist who has been discarded by the company due to malfunctions, which is quite refreshing to see.

Though the performances are commendable, the film’s standout aspects are its production design and music. 

The film’s director, Fede Álvarez, made it very clear in the marketing for the film that he did not want to overload the screen with CGI aliens and instead created animatronics which resulted in some of the creative property’s most spine-chilling creatures to date. 

Álvarez also made it a mission to combine the horror of “Alien” with the action of “Aliens.” On this front, he definitely succeeded. The beginning’s slow burn echoes the original film, and the high-powered third act is reminiscent of the action-packed gunplay among the colonial marines first seen in “Aliens.”

The claustrophobic space station and the smog-infested colony of Jackson’s Star, located on the planet Jackson, both add to the film’s eeriness. The atmosphere is so dark and suffocating that it barely gives the audience a chance to breathe.

The score, composed by Benjamin Wallfisch, also adds to the movie’s haunting mood. The combination of original pieces and homages to previous scores from “Alien” films will satisfy fans while simultaneously providing new blood-curdling tracks.

In fact, the score isn’t the only thing that honors past “Alien” projects. Álvarez makes sure that every film in the franchise is referenced in a certain capacity, with numerous callbacks throughout the film.

This, however, reveals many of the film’s weaknesses. At a certain point, the callbacks go from fun little easter eggs to quoting iconic lines from the franchise in cheesy, over-the-top moments.

There is also a seemingly major plot hole in the film’s beginning. In the first few minutes, it is explained that most of the space colonists must work hard hours in the planet’s mines to gain the ability to leave.

Though it isn’t directly stated whether or not the film’s main characters can afford any sort of space transportation, it doesn’t feel realistic that they should have such access to a spacecraft. 

Additionally, the space station floats directly over the planet, and yet nobody seems to care about it except for the film’s main characters. Whether this is purposeful or not is unclear, but it seems as though it would be a prominent concern for the planet’s other inhabitants.

Even with these issues, the film is still a standout entry that will satisfy fans looking for a nostalgic trip to the “Alien” films of old.

Rating: 3.5/5

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The Lord of the Rings' Ian McKellen Keeps Telling Himself 'I'm Not Too Old to Act' After Stage Fall

"i've had a very lucky escape.".

The Lord of the Rings' Gandalf actor Ian McKellen has said he needs to keep telling himself "I'm not too old to act" after falling off a stage during a performance in June 2024.

McKellen told Saga Magazine he's not yet recovered from the fall, but the emotional damage has seemingly had just as much an impact on the 85-year-old as the physical injuries.

"I started screaming 'Help me' and then 'I’m sorry, I don’t do this'," he said of the moment he fell. "I thought it was the end of something. It was very upsetting." Since then, "I have to keep assuring myself that I’m not too old to act and it was just a bloody accident."

McKellen was playing John Falstaff in Player Kings on London's West End when he got his leg stuck in a chair during a battle scene. He started shaking it off and his foot slipped on pieces of newspaper scattered around the stage.

"The more I tried to get rid of it, the faster I proceeded down a step, onto the forestage, and then on to the lap of someone in the front row," McKellen said. He was wearing a fat suit for the role, which he credited with saving his ribs and joints. "I've had a very lucky escape," he added.

The Lord of the Rings Movies in (Chronological) Order

McKellen is most famous for playing the wise old wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies and may even reprise the role in upcoming live action film Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum . Aware of his age, McKellen responded when asked if he'd be interested in returning to Middle Earth : "If I'm alive."

Photo by New Line/WireImage.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

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