The Falls

Synopsis

“The Falls is an exhaustive, and at times exhausting, elucidation of 92 alphabetically arranged case histories of individuals whose last names begin with the letters F-A-L-L. As a result of exposure to the Violent Unknown Event (or VUE), these people have either contracted bizarre diseases, found themselves fluent in strange languages, or undergone bodily changes mimicking avian morphology. Across the film’s 195 minutes, Greenaway manages to pack in further references to Tulse Luper’s stories and films, gently parodies the BFI as the Bird Facilities Institute, and stunt casts the Quay brothers as twins Ipson and Pulat Fallari. The filmmaker also gets to indulge his twin passions: mythology (the fall of Icarus) and art history (the mysterious egg suspended above the Madonna in Piero della Francesca’s Brera Madonna).” – Budd Wilkins