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ReelRage - Falling Down
From BoF 1
With each BoF we look at some of the finest
depictions of on-screen fury. This edition we’re On the D-fensive with Joel
Schumacher’s Falling Down: ‘the
adventure of an ordinary man at war with the everyday world’. A brutal, funny
and multi-layered cinematic experience,
Falling Down is a movie that allows the viewer to engage with it on a range
of emotional and intellectual levels.
Falling Down is a film about consequence.
It’s a film that makes you laugh, makes you wince and makes you think. It’s
certainly a film that lives longer in the mind than most. The main plot follows
the adventures of Bill Foster (or ‘D-fens’), the antihero who discovers that
simply going home is not as easy as it sounds. Driven to the edge by the
failure of his marriage and the subsequent realisation that his life is
imploding he takes issue with the banality of the world, with spectacular
results.
Bill negotiates the urban jungle in somewhat
unconventional style, seemingly free from what keeps us all on the straight and
narrow: consequence. What separates the good, rational members of society from
the scum is the ability to consider the implications of ones actions. For
someone of good intentions to abandon any thought of consequence is to abandon
all hope. The basis of all decision making should be the resultant consequence.
The bleak message is that D-fens was no longer simply prepared to comply.
Therein lies the secret to the movie’s black humour: Some
of us, in our darker moments, would love to do what D-fens does, even if no
sane person could rationally condone his actions. For example, how many of us
have wanted to complain directly when faced with overpriced goods but have lacked the courage? A fair few I would guess. So when
Bill clears the shelves of Mr Lee’s store with a baseball bat whilst ‘standing
up for his rights as a consumer’ its difficult not to feel some guilty
pleasure. That enjoyment is indeed guilt-ridden however, as we have previously
seen Bill assuming the Korean Mr Lee is Chinese and taking issue with his
pronunciation. It is uncomfortable viewing, given the racist undertones and the
frank representation of taboo subjects.
A further example of ‘real life’ empathy exists as we see
Bill encounter a beggar – casting off the shackles of social expectancy by
refusing to give him money through guilt. We share Bill’s outrage at the
refusal of a fast food chain to serve breakfast a few minutes after the
deadline and the now clichéd observation that burgers in no way resemble their
advertisements. Once again, it is consequence that stops us entering the
nearest burger chain and waiving a sub machine gun around. But we can live the
dream through Bill. He’s getting what he wants, telling it like it is and
no-one we care about is really getting hurt. Yet.
Empathy is all well and good, but another reason Falling Down has staying power is that
it remains so outrageous in parts that the escapism value, vital for a film to
succeed, is not harmed. Although we’ve been able to relate to some of the
issues discussed so far, most of us can safely say that we’ve never been held
hostage by a neo-Nazi shopkeeper or blown up road works with a bazooka. The
movie takes a sharp turn down Hollywood
Blockbuster Avenue when Bill is harboured from the
police by Nick, the Nazi shopkeeper who wrongly assumes Bill is also a racist
homophobe. Offering him WWI gas masks, empty tins of Zyklon B and a bazooka as
a peace offering (again, not something that has happened to me), Nick is
horrified to discover that Bill is in total disagreement with his Nazi
ideology, and the ensuing struggle sees Bill stab and shoot Nick as his journey
from respectable citizen to killer is complete. As he points out, this is the
point of no return: the point where it’s further to go back to the beginning
than it is to carry on to the end. This is an important scene, if not a little
overbearing, as it points out that ‘hey, Bill is the bad guy but he’s not as
bad as Nick so it’s OK to like him’ but it also leaves the viewer thinking
‘what is this man capable of, and should I be rooting for him or not?’
Importantly, we are given some background to Bill and his
problems. We see Bill’s ex-wife living in fear of him but admitting that her ex
didn’t strike her. This is important from an empathetic point of view, because
our support for Bill would evaporate should it be proven that he had ‘crossed
the line’ in his conduct with his ex-wife. As it is, we are still mostly left
in the dark as to what has gone on and therefore unsure as to whether we should
be supporting him, or hoping for the cops to take him down.
Detective Martin Prendergast (played wonderfully by
Robert Duvall) is the policeman who pieces Bill’s crimes together and tracks
him down. Stretching plausibility to breaking point, not only is it
Prendergast’s supposed last day on active duty; he is also seemingly one of a
few good cops in a bad town. When comparing the characters Prendergast and
D-fens you get an interfusion of semblance and contrast. Both men endure a
climacteric day but it is the way in which they conduct their lives on a larger
scale that forms the starker contrast. Prendergast is balanced, patient and
thoughtful whilst D-fens is edgy, unstable and (at least temporarily)
irrational.
The climax of the movie sees Bill make it ‘home’ to a
terrified wife and daughter only for Prendergast to intervene. The assumption
is that Bill was going to slaughter his family before taking his own life, but
once again the viewer is left not knowing for certain. Ultimately Bill decides
the only acceptable way out is death, forcing Prendergast to shoot him in a
tense stand off. Bill’s sacrifice for the good of his daughter (who will get the
insurance money, apparently) ensures that when watching the movie again,
knowing that Bill ends the day in such a way allows you to root for him at
other parts of the movie, without the guilty conscience.
Although Falling
Down carries a number of deep, dark and downright depressing messages, the
smatterings of black humour spaced throughout offer some respite. For example,
as Bill takes a rest in one of the city’s less desirable areas, two thugs point
out that the graffiti scrawled on the nearby concrete means
‘This is f***ing private
property, no f***ing trespassing, this means f***ing you’
Only for Bill to
retort with the classic line:
‘Well maybe if you wrote it in
f***ing English I could f***ing understand it’
Another example is Bills reference to advertising in the
fast food outlet. Pointing to a picture of a Burger on a poster he remarks
‘Look at that, its plump, it’s
juicy, its 3 inches think… [then points to the burger he’s been handed] and
look at this sorry, miserable, squashed thing…’
As Bill heads towards the end of his journey he ventures
across a golf course. A golfer takes exception to his presence and aims the
ball right at him shouting ‘Fore!’, only for Bill to remove a shotgun from him
bag and retort with ‘Five!... and now you’re going to die wearing that stupid
little hat!’
Falling Down carries a lot of messages about
the world we live in. A world where a plastic surgeon, who’s job is simply
aesthetic, lives in luxury whilst those of us who do the necessary daily drudge
are left with the scraps. It’s a world where acres and acres of leafy green
land are reserved solely for those private members with a bag of balls and
clubs. It’s a world where we don’t get what we pay for, where people would
rather step over you than help you, and where people only care about
themselves. What it seems to be saying more than all this though is that you
need to realise this, and cope with it. If you try to fight it, you won’t win.
A lot of people at some point in their lives have
experienced bullying, either firsthand or through watching it happen. The human
instinct is to want to fight back, be David to the bully’s Goliath and see him
get his comeuppance. In the movies this happens all the time (Thinking back to
a couple of my favourite 80s classics where the Karate Kid lays out the
bullying Johnny with the infamous crane technique or when Back To The Future’s
George McFly flattens Biff in a moment of unnatural courage) In reality
however, the bully does not usually get his comeuppance. And even if he does it
is not in such a spectacular manner. In reality the pupil hands over his dinner
money, the employee says yes and doesn’t file the complaint and the innocent
stay away from known ganglands.
We know all of this, and we deal with it most of the
time. D-fens knew this too, but he had reached a stage where he could no longer
cope. Once he started to fight back, his journey was also a lesson in the evils
of power. He started off wanting to exert his own personal authority and ‘make
a stand’ for himself. By the end of the movie he wanted to change the opinions
of others. No longer content with having the power and ability to control his
own destiny, he needed to influence others and force them into his way of
thinking. A good example of this is where, at gunpoint, he forces a workman
into admitting that ‘there’s nothing wrong with the street they’re working on’
whereas in reality there is. It was just an inconvenient truth for D-fens to
cope with.
Falling Down is described on the box as ‘A
tale of urban reality’. In all honesty it is fairly well removed from reality
in most places although still a brilliantly entertaining and thought-provoking
film. As for the greater meaning, perhaps Confucius said it best: “When anger
rises, think of the consequences”
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