Falling (2020)

Powerful, persuasive and insightful, Falling is a sensitive and beautifully composed film that marks the formidable directing debut of the wonderful actor Viggo Mortensen.

Viggo Mortensen scores a standout directing debut, showing the artful sensitivity and offbeat humor that define him as an actor with this heart-piercing drama in which he stars as a gay son coping with the dementia of his racist father (a career-best Lance Henriksen).

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.

Viggo Mortensen makes a sensitive and assured directing debut with Falling, a meditation on aging, mortality and slow-drip loss that will resonate deeply with anyone going through the agonies it depicts.

Mostly, Falling succeeds because Mortensen is playing by his own uncompromising rules. The result is a vision that may grate, but will never be lost to memory

A bold, brave first effort behind the camera for Viggo Mortensen, elegantly distilling some painful truths for anyone who has ever had a complicated relationship with a parent.

It’s a really valuable work, beautifully edited and shot, with a wonderful performance by the veteran actor Lance Henriksen: a sombre, clear-eyed look at the bitter endgame of dementia.

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.

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.

Falling is a finely drawn character drama, as you might expect from much of Mortensen’s acting career, and a film that pays attention to small details that bring these people to life.

(Mauro Lanari) A remake of "The Father" influenced by a sequel to "Green Book": is the non-linear structure due to the point of view of paternal dementia or the confusion in the childhood memories of Viggo on his directorial debut? He has forced the character of the couple of protagonists to the point of a caricatural parody of the polarized political, ideological and moral souls of the contemporary United States: an intermediate agonic phase between two mutual inability to take care of a dying person, at the beginning and at the end of the film.