Falling Review: Viggo Mortensen & Lance Henriksen Deliver Career-Bests
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
Written & Directed by Viggo Mortensen
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 sympath
Viggo Mortensen does it all in his directing debut Falling Writer/producer/director/scorer also stars in this graceful tale of a gay man trying to reconcile with his father
Author of the article: Chris Knight
Publishing date: Feb 05, 2021 • February 9, 2021 • 1 minute read • Lance Henriksen and Viggo Mortensen play father and son in Falling. Photo by Mongrel Media
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Viggo Mortensen seems to have pulled a Clint Eastwood with
Falling. Not only is the film his directing debut; he wrote, produced, scored and stars as John Peterson, a gay man whose ageing 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.
Falling is a hard film to watch because its central situation is so hard to endure.
Viggo Mortensen is John, a middle-aged corporate jet pilot who lives in California with a loving husband Eric (Terry Chen) and an adopted daughter, Mónica (Gabby Velis). Lance Henriksen is Willis, John s father, who still lives on a farm in upstate New York where John and his sister grew up, alone save for his horses, his dementia, and his rage.
From its first scene, Falling tells us what we re in for, and it s not an afternoon at Disney World. A sleeping Willis bolts awake during an airplane ride with John, who s taking him to California in a half-baked plan to buy him a house there, and begins stalking the aisle, shouting profanity and bellowing for his wife, who died years ago. He grabs the remains of a drink from another passenger s tray and downs it; that the passenger is Black makes you brace for a torrent of epithets that never comes, thankfully, although subsequent scen