Falling Down | The Moral of the Story

I don't know [Music] we've all had days where it feels like the world is aligned against you days were even the smallest annoyances can feel like Chinese water torture because they're being Amplified by larger underlying problems falling down opens with William defense Foster enduring one of these days but instead of popping a Xanax and keeping his head down Bill decides to defy his normal routine and wage war against the injustices he perceives to be destroying his world from the first minute of Joel Schumacher's film it's evident that the environment of Bill is just as important to the story as the man himself throughout the course of Bill's Odyssey through post-cold War America one line is repeated more than any other [Applause] the home that bill has in mind is the one by the pier and Ice Cream Parlor the homie lived in with his wife and daughter the homie would go to after A Hard Day's Work he believes that if he can escape LA traffic and physically return to that house he'll be able to reclaim his former life but Bill doesn't believe he's responsible for losing that life he believes that it was stolen from him by a quickly degenerating American society built on deceptive advertising and people like this breakfast yeah well hey I'm really sorry yeah well hey I'm really sorry too you can see this belief through Bill's appearance he rolls with the 50s flat top and glasses he wears a white shirt and black tie he's a man Frozen in Time but his style becomes the only connection he has to the picturesque Family Man ideal of previous American decades the wife child and white picket fans have all vanished even the job that Society used to Value has been eradicated by the Soviet collapse and subsequent peace dividend falling down investigates Bill's convictions about his own life and the investigation has not conducted solely through our main character we're also introduced to an LA detective by the name of Prendergast who's portrayed brilliantly by Robert Duvall as always his range is matched by very few other actors in Hollywood Prendergast has a number of similarities with William Foster the most notable being their shared loss of a child bills through divorce Prendergast through sudden infant death syndrome but aside from personal loss Pendergast also shares Bill's feelings of alienation Pendergast is a soft-spoken good mattered old school detective the department around him has transformed into the opposite he's now forced to work alongside Patrick Bateman wannabes and a chief who resents his straight lace demeanor hey Paul [Music] so falling down places these two forgotten men next to each other and uses their vastly different behaviors to make a Timeless point about how we should react if we ever find Ourselves cast out by the new Norm after leaving his car in LA traffic breaking away from the flow of society defense becomes hypersensitive to societal changes that he could probably ignore in times past the first example being the convenience store encounter he can no longer stand quiet as the owner refuses to give him change that they both know he can offer and he can no longer pay prices he considers to be exploitative if he saw prices nowadays he would probably just erupt with the force of an atomic bomb and that'd be it that'd be another movie don't even need to see Oppenheimer so in spectacular fashion Bill rules the prices back to 1965 to use his own words and the entire batting practice is therapeutic for Bill for the first time in his life he feels like he's regaining control over the system he believes is aligned against him in the genius of the writing in Michael Douglas's performance is that it's easy to relate to Bill's frustration on a visceral level when I go to a baseball game and get asked to pay 14 for a beer there's a part of me that wants to put on a white shirt and black tie and get a flat top so even though Bill's Rebellion is Criminal it doesn't sever your connection with the character as Bill's Journey continues he encounters a wide array of different American inadequacies highlighted by Schumacher and these inadequacies are represented by very over-the-top characters which makes sense given the role they play in the story so we meet Petty gang members entitled Beggars NPC fast food employees neo-nazis and of course Rich arrogant golfers all of these people in one way or another violate his perception of what an ideal Society should look like orderly respectful and honest they took the America of 1960 the America he thinks he belongs to and morphed it into a highly saturated fraudulent mess Prendergast approaches his situation very differently the sticker on his desk says it all I'm just happy to be here his co-workers give him [ __ ] and he smiles it off his paranoid wife commands him around and he calmly talks her down he's not a confrontational person his tendency is to shrink when confronted with conflict but as Bill's trail of Carnage grows Prendergast Rises to the occasion it's almost like he absorbs some of the resentful energy left behind by defense and uses it to his Advantage he stands up to his co-worker and his wife but he does it in a calculated way without any externalities Bill Foster could never be described as a hero because he puts no limits on his rage everyone he suspects to be part of the system becomes a Target and this culminates in the pool scene where Bill complains about becoming not economically viable as he waves a gun right next to a little girl's head he becomes so captured by his own grievances that he fails to acknowledge his own faults this is the key point of the film eventually Bill Foster does return home and of course it's empty because his wife and child ran away scared but he stays for a little bit to take a trip down memory lane and it's the best scene of the movie at first the videotape is a Vindication look how good things were if only my accompanied and fire me if only my Society didn't degenerate I would still have that life and I would be happy but then the mood turns he watches his former self lash out at his wife over a stupid horsey boss for his daughter and we get this incredible moment where Bill looks away from the screen with his cracked glasses and you can read his thoughts he recognizes just for a moment that he is responsible for what his life has become unfortunately this realization is fleeting and does not destroy his victimhood narrative when he reaches the pier he scolds his ex-wife for betraying her vows he explains to Prendergast that it was the lies of a society that made up a bad guy and not his own actions and he takes that belief to his grave falling down was filmed during the 1992 LA riots and images from that event reflect a society that seemed to be teetering on the edge of full-scale meltdown so it was a fitting time for Joel Schumacher to tell a story about how One deals with feeling alienated and forgotten by Society different arguments can be made about the problems Schumacher highlights in falling down and how they compare from a severity perspective the larger point is that every society will have its own problems it could be economic political cultural at one point or another you're not going to be 100 thrilled about what's going on around you it's very easy to empathize with Bill when he describes how he became not economically viable and of course there's another character who shares his feelings and sadly many people could hear something similar in coming years as AI becomes more prevalent but bad breaks don't give you a mandate to make things worse which is why Prendergast tries to tell Bill at the end of the film William Foster is one of the great modern characters because you can tell he isn't a bad man he is not the character played by Frederick force that is for sure he's a troubled man corrupted by resentment in a longing for a life that has long since passed him by now the other side of the coin is Prendergast who changes his mind and remains a detective knowing full well that his environment at home and in the office is going to reject his decision he accepts that the world is unfair but decides he's going to do everything in his ability to make it better because that's his responsibility so the case of Falling Down is certainly not just accept the things you wish were different confrontation is needed at times as we see with Prendergast but when outside problems blind you to your own problems serious troubles on the horizon in few movies communicate that in a more entertaining way than Joel Schumacher's falling down thank you so much for stopping by guys if you enjoyed this video please subscribe for more videos like it in the future and if you've seen falling down definitely leave your thoughts in the comments it's a movie ripe for debate that is for sure but I have a fantastic rest your day I will talk to you soon away

Channel: Life Is A Story

Views: 40,366

Keywords: falling down, falling down movie, falling down analysis, falling down film analysis, falling down reaction, falling down review, falling down movie analysis, falling down america, falling down dfens

Id: 7wMu3y6mex4

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 23 2023