Aside from his impressive acting career, Viggo Mortensen has always been a remarkably talented man in other fields, being a talented musician, writer, photographer and book publisher, and a move into directing seems a logical move, and indeed one may wonder why it has taken the Manhattan-born actor so long to move to the other side of the camera, Falling, which he wrote, directed, wrote the music and takes one of the leads, coming some thirty-six years after his first appearance on the big screen, as Amish farmer Moses in Peter Weir’s superb Witness(’85). Mortensen has acted a remarkable range of films, everything from controversial horror movies (Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III - ’90) to offbeat indie comedy (Captain Fantastic - ’16), arthouse drama (Green Book - ’18) and the epic sprawl of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and embracing most genres and styles along the way, his collaboration with David Cronenberg, casting him as an American small-town diner owner with a very murky history in A History Of Violence (’05), Eastern Promises’ Russian Mafia thug in ’07, and a role as the psychologist Sigmund Freud (A Dangerous Method - ’11), perfectly showing his versatility. The connections to the iconic Canadian filmmaker run deep here, with Cronenberg himself having a role as a doctor, and the crew including veterans Ronald Sanders, the director’s editor since 1979’s Fast Company, and production designer / art director Carol Spier and casting director Deirdre Bowen, both of whom have worked on Cronenberg films since The Dead Zone in 1983, Bowen pleasingly also having cast son Brandon’s devastating Possessor (’20).

For Falling he turns to a contained, focused and fractured family drama, the story of a middle-aged son trying to reconcile with his ailing father, despite years of childhood abuse, estrangement and hostility, the situation being made all the more uncomfortable by Mortenson’s character John being gay and now with a long-term partner and adopted child, and his father, Willis, never exactly a tolerant man, having all his social and emotional filters removed through accelerating dementia. Willis, seventy-five years old and almost glowering with resentment, anger and pent-up hatred, is brilliantly cast in the form of Lance Henriksen, the veteran character actor, probably best known for his roles in Aliens (’86), the original Pumpkinhead (’86), Hard Target (’93) and TV’s Mllennium (’96-’99), and one of the most tireless actors currently working, having made more then 260 film and TV appearances since his 1972 debut, most in the horror of sci-fi brackets, but a talented and often compelling performer when given decent material, which is not always the case.

Henriksen’s portrayal of Willis, as thin and seemingly frail he appears, is as terrifying a tyrant a young child could imagine, as John’s memories of his childhood prove. With John being an adult, through his politics, his sexuality, his domestic situation and anything else Willis can grasp at, the old man makes his son know that he hates every aspect of his offspring’s life, doling out sarcasm, vile slurs and insults, in a bravura performance which one can admire in its’ candour, but may prove upsetting to those who have had to deal with parents in the same situation, and when challenged Willis is always capable of putting himself in the role of the victim, blaming everything and everybody around him. With three actors playing the young John, at four years, between nine and eleven, and at sixteen, one sees the grinding oppression and underlying fear someone like Willis can inflict on a family, and how anything resembling familial happiness or security just disappears.

John is trying to bring peace and security to Willis’ final weeks or months, but the ingrained anger and rage is too ingrained, and in unsettling shots one can see Willis’ memories literally overlapping on each other, making his grasp of the present-day even more tenuous, another reason for his tirades, partly sparked by fear and uncertainty, and Henriksen’s performance is as vivid and frightening as any performance he has given in a horror movie, and the insults, slurs and vile language he hurls at anyone within earshot are truly cringing, no aspect of a person’s character, nature or appearance being immune to his reactionary condemnation.

Mortensen has noted that, although the film has certain parallels with his own family, it shouldn’t be taken as auto-biographical, for which one should be grateful.

Reviews were largely positive for this challenging directorial debut, The Wrap saying ‘ 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’, with Variety calling it ‘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’. The Guardian called it ‘ …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’. But Consequence of Sound had very mixed feelings - ‘Despite great direction by Mortensen, who also delivers a strong performance alongside Henriksen and (briefly) Linney, Falling is a repetitive and exhausting exercise that never gets around to unpacking why the audience should care about its ailing patriarch character. It’s too long and too one note for too little pay-off’.