Falling more than a vanity project
First-time director Viggo Mortensen scores (literally) with insightful debut
Viggo Mortensen seems to have pulled a Clint Eastwood with Falling.
Not only is the film his directing debut, he also wrote, produced, scored and stars as John Peterson, a gay man whose aging father, Willis (Lance Henriksen), is suffering from dementia. John hosts his dad on a visit to California, where the old man is looking for a new place to live.
The fact that John is gay is important to the plot, since
Willis is (and, as flashbacks show, always has been) openly homophobic and also pretty insufferable to those around him. The first thing we see him tell his infant son is: “Sorry I brought you into this world. So you could die.” I wouldn't be surprised if the screenplay refers to Willis as “a piece of work.”
Mortensen shot his film in California but also Ontario, and
the supporting Canadian cast includes David Cronenberg as a proctologist, Paul Gross as a doctor and his daughter, Hannah Gross, as Gwen, John's mother in the flashback scenes. Alberta's Terry Chen plays John's husband.
The film feels like a pressure cooker building up a fine head of steam, with the biggest uncertainty being when (or whether) John is going to lose his cool at Willis's stubbornly “ist-ist” ways. (He's sexist, racist, etc.) And while that may seem a rickety foundation for a plot, Falling includes some lovely grace notes that make the journey worthwhile. Despite Mortensen's multi-hyphenate credits, this is clearly more than the vanity project it might at first seem.