I was curious to see The Falling because of the near universal praise that it got from critics; when I saw that the opposite tended to be true when it came to viewers. With the director's previous film (Dreams of a Life) I had liked what it did well, but didn't feel it wholly worked. With The Falling, I can see a lot of interest in there, and an inherent sense of beauty and sadness in the delivery – and a big part of the snob in me wants to side with the critics in saying how fantastic this film is. However the truth is that it constantly left me on the outside looking in, with mysteries around the characters that were never really satisfied, and a final reveal that comes out of nowhere and does little to nothing to fill the void retrospectively.
The plot centers a group of school girls growing up, who fall into a rash of fainting when one of their number suffers a tragedy. There is a lot that can be read into this, and I did so much want to connect to this occurrence as part of a story of the girls struggling with more than they can cope with – more feelings, desires, pain etc that they hadn't ever been able to quantify, now all hitting them at once. This was the most obvious connection/thread that I found, but I didn't find it to engage or interest me. Too much of the film was spent flowering up the story with arty shots, a "pained yet beautiful 101" score, and I had too many obstacles to getting into the heads of the characters. The cast did not seem to have this problem, and there are many strong performances across the film, but I was left cold.
The final moment of the film also seemed out of nowhere and didn't work for me since I was not invested in the characters by this point – only watching things play out. Certainly the film has a beauty to it (although personally I hated the music), the performances are strong, and the concept has potential; but it gets tied up in itself, forgets the viewer, and doesn't offer a way in, leaving an infuriating experience for me, although perhaps for a small audience this will amaze as it hits every mark.
The plot centers a group of school girls growing up, who fall into a rash of fainting when one of their number suffers a tragedy. There is a lot that can be read into this, and I did so much want to connect to this occurrence as part of a story of the girls struggling with more than they can cope with – more feelings, desires, pain etc that they hadn't ever been able to quantify, now all hitting them at once. This was the most obvious connection/thread that I found, but I didn't find it to engage or interest me. Too much of the film was spent flowering up the story with arty shots, a "pained yet beautiful 101" score, and I had too many obstacles to getting into the heads of the characters. The cast did not seem to have this problem, and there are many strong performances across the film, but I was left cold.
The final moment of the film also seemed out of nowhere and didn't work for me since I was not invested in the characters by this point – only watching things play out. Certainly the film has a beauty to it (although personally I hated the music), the performances are strong, and the concept has potential; but it gets tied up in itself, forgets the viewer, and doesn't offer a way in, leaving an infuriating experience for me, although perhaps for a small audience this will amaze as it hits every mark.