Viggo Mortensen’s new film, Falling, premiered at Sundance this week. The initial reviews make us eager to see the film for ourselves.
Peter Debruge for Variety: “Lance Henriksen gives the performance of his career as an emasculated father facing dementia, but it’s writer-director-star Viggo Mortensen who makes the film’s universal themes resonate so strongly.”
More deeply felt than your typical American debut, “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.
Peter Debruge, Variety
Steve Pond for The Wrap: “The actor turned writer-director has made a beautifully controlled drama about age, memory and forgiveness.”
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.Steve Pond, The Wrap
John DeFore for The Hollywood Reporter: “As intelligent and sensitive a directing debut as you’d expect, and a highlight of [Lance] Henriksen’s career.”
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.
John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter
See also some more critical reviews:
- Jon Negroni for The Young Folks: “Falling Review: Viggo Mortensen’s directorial debut is an excruciating melodrama about fatherhood,” and “[Viggo Mortensen’s] first movie is a personal one, as it’s inspired by real-life conflicts with his own father, and it explores how generational bitterness can sometimes find no remedy or easy solution, even for men at a certain age.”
- Vince Mancini for Uproxx: “Falling does have impressive comedic construction and timing for a movie without much in the way of a point of view.”
- Evan Saathoff for Birth. Movies. Death.: “Obviously Falling is a labor of love from Mortensen, telling what I have to assume is a very personal story. But that’s not worth much if no one else can relate to it. This is simply a difficult film to watch, much less recommend.”