9
BFI Player

Absolutely loved this, although if any film deserves a "this ain't for everyone" disclaimer, The Falls is it. Peter Greenaway's 3-hour 15-minute experimental mockumentary combines science fiction, philosophy, avant-garde imagery, linguistics debate and a lot of ornithology. It is a work of near-genius, even more impressive for being Greenaway's debut feature, and is a reminder that the British film industry is (or was) capable of producing challenging, fascinating films.

Set a number of years after the so-called "Violent Unknown Event" (a term which manages to sound terrifying and yet wonderfully vague at the same time), The Fals is structured around 92 mini-biographies of VUE victims, chosen at random out of all all such victims whose last names begin with "Fall". Each victim has suffered a different set of symptoms following the VUE: some grow taller, some lose weight, others start to physically transform into bird-like creatures. Some dream of water or bridges. Most suddenly become proficient in brand new languages. All appear to have become immortal. Almost all seem to have become obsessed with birds, flight, or both. It sounds like the set-up for a dystopian fantasy film (or perhaps an X-Men-style comic book scenario), but tonally that couldn't be further from the truth, with Greenaway instead using the concept to explore the eccentricities and foibles of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation to hilarious (and sometimes unexpectedly moving) effect, explained by a wonderfully deadpan, matter-of-fact series of narrators. Greenaway's focus not on violence and societal breakdown in the aftermath of the VUE, but instead on the cavalcade of oddballs, obsessives and eccentrics it left in its wake (who, it seems, were already that way inclined even before the Event) feels strangely comforting to me.

What is most impressive about The Falls, however, is the way in which Greenaway weaves certain narrative threads throughout the 92 biographies. Some characters pop up in multiple episodes, as do particular organisations (such as FOX, an anti-bird pressure group). Other times, an "expert" interviewed in one vignette will later turn up in a biography dedicated to them. Meanwhile, the question of what exactly was the VUE arises multiple times, with numerous (contradictory) theories expounded: sometimes it seems like a meteorite crash was responsible; at others, it feels more like some sort of episode of mass hysteria, or perhaps some sort of avian rebellion against the tyranny of humanity. It is even suggested that the VUE might in fact be a hoax: one of my favourite episodes involves a subject who is convinced that the whole thing was made up by Alfred Hitchcock in order to make his film The Birds sound plausible.

The Falls is dense, each biography so packed with information that it is easy to succumb to overload, especially near the start (there is very little in the way of hand-holding). Since each vignette relates in some way to each other vignette, it is a film where those details do matter. My advice would be to stick with it: you'll be rewarded with one of the most complex, playful, idiosyncratic, unique viewing experiences you are ever likely to see.