WILLIS IS A difficult man to love. It was easier when he was younger: he was handsome, strong and independent. His selfishness was tempered by charm; his prejudices and anger by an instinctive knack for parenting. Now he is old, dementia has set in and his meanest, basest instincts rampage through him like ill-tempered rhinos. To him, everyone is an asshole, fag or whore. He bets Picasso “had the pick of all the foreign pussy”. His horse, Bree, is a “fat bitch”. California “is for cocksuckers and flag burners”. His vilest vitriol, however, is reserved for his immediate family: his children John and Sarah, now middle-aged, and his late ex-wives, Gwen and Jill. In one ugly scene, he gleefully needles John (Viggo Mortensen) and Sarah (Laura Linney), before losing control and screaming at them, his face contorted with spite: “Your mother was a whore fag-breeder!”
“Falling” is divided between two worlds within the same country: an austere farm in the Midwest and a big Californian city. John lives in the city with his husband, Eric (Terry Chen), and their bilingual daughter, Monica. Willis has spent his life on the farm: running it, running off two wives, estranging himself from his two children and nursing the embers of his resentment and bigotry. Now, though, Willis is struggling to cope and has called his son to come and get him. When he made the call, he thought he might sell the farm and come and live near John; now he has forgotten he ever asked. His condition leaves him inconsistent and inexplicable to those around him, but entire unto himself.
As a portrait of the mind of a difficult man in the twilight of his life, “Falling” is compelling. A series of beautifully shot flashbacks—to Willis’s early married life, John’s birth, and two shooting trips the pair take together—reveal a deep and multifaceted character. His rage, never wholly absent, intensifies and matures with life’s disappointments and setbacks, until his personality is pickled in it. And yet, no matter how far he pushes everyone around him, he teeters on the edge of redeemability. Even now Willis (played as an old man by Lance Henriksen, pictured, and as a young one by Svenrrir Gundason) is capable of tenderness as well as savagery. The same man who dotingly gives one granddaughter his pocket watch turns to another to ask if a face piercing is a “dumbass fashion thing or a dyke thing”. And while he is crass, he is funny too. “When a guy my age thinks he needs to pee, he already did.”
The most striking feature of “Falling” are the performances Mr Mortensen, who also wrote and directed the film, manages to coax out of his co-stars. Mr Henriksen, who turned 80 this year, is astonishing. His face, sweet one moment as he loses himself in a happy memory, can reconfigure in an instant to simian rage.
“Falling” falls short in two areas. The first is the under-development of some key secondary characters. Eric is a saintly cipher and Sarah’s children are given very little to say. The second is in narrative drive. Things do happen—a family meal, a health scare, a return to the farm—but from around the 45-minute mark each scenario re-treads old ground. The viewer knows Willis by now.
Despite these flaws, “Falling” deserves the acclaim it has been receiving on the festival circuit. It is visually lush. It will resonate with anyone with a complicated parent, or with knowledge of someone suffering from dementia. It will, most of all, stay with the viewer long after the credits roll. Willis may be difficult to love, but he is impossible to forget.
“Falling” will be released in British cinemas on December 4th
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