The Fall (2019)

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Screenplay: Jonathan Glazer

Archive Review

[A review left unfinished earlier this year, it qualifies as an archival piece because it did not include any references to whether it qualified for the Abstract Rating or not. Also as a very short review of a short, I wonder if it had been sufficiently detailed enough, even with the additional context added now later, to be a good review or not. For the sake of appreciating Jonathan Glazer's work however, I have provided the review nonetheless.]

 

After making Under the Skin (2013) - his startling sci-fi film which combined the unnatural, Scarlett Johansson in a brave role as an alien temptress, and the banality of Scottish urban environments, where Johansson is inexplicably in a film where you have buses, beans on toast and even Greggs sandwich shops onscreen - Glazer sadly vanished throughout the rest of the 2010s. In general, in he has been elusive to film making in general, but especially in the theatrical field as he has only made three feature length films between 2000 and 2013. But then the director who made his name with music videos for the likes of Radiohead suddenly dropped a project on BBC Two one night, when this ominous short suddenly was shown after an episode of The Americas with Simon Reeve on the unsuspecting public on 27 October 2019.

It is so short, The Fall is like a fragment of a nightmare rather than a production you can easily discuss in greater detail. One of the influences was a snapshot of Eric and Donald Trump Jr on a big-game hunting jaunt, holding a dead leopard they had shot, and it is not a surprise to see this as what it literally says on the surface without need for deeper detail, that of a mob who are trying to get a terrified man out of a tree at night in the middle of the woods. They do, taking a picture having pounced on him like prey, like an animal captured or killed at a big game hunt, only to proceed to hang him. The hanging, which evokes actual lynchings without any attempt to neuter the iconography, does take an odd turn when there is not only a drop in the middle of the woods, but that it is endless downwards for the victim.

Prominently the cast wears masks, ornate and carved, evoking for me Japanese theatre. They are startling in obscuring emotion in the mob and the victim, with their fixed feature and the strong emotions to them. The symbolism beyond the obvious is so minimal, like a dream, it would be absurd to spin a political slant baring the fact that, in its presentation and tone, it is inherently scary to witness. Anything beyond comparing this imagery to real life commentary would obscure inherently potent imagery which is political in its universal simplicity. Glazer for an interview with the Guardian website went as far as talk about the rise of National Socialism in Germany and the likelihood of this happening again¹, and mob mentality is an aspect of humanity, in any context, which is still a dark side of us as a species. That there is a lynching, alongside the comparison to hunting a person down like an animal, itself is as frightening as an image because people have sadly become victims of this.

The film, shown on BBC2 without opening and ending credits, has a strange nature to it which is compelling. All set at night, with the quiet coda that, managing to stop himself on the way down, we leave with our victim with a leg each side of what is an endless well climbing up slowly, hopefully a victim who has survived unscathed. Mica Levi, an indie musician who stormed cinema composition with her music for Under the Skin, gives The Fall something evocative and minimal to adding to the tone. The result, alongside its intention and clever screening tactic, causes one hope that Grazer produces more work soon as he has still firing on all cylinders. 

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1) Source HERE.