The Falls

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🎙️ EPISODE 566: 09.30.22 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟏𝟎-𝐕𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐞 RANKING GREENAWAY 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 An astonishingly original work of art that will forever pass the test of time in film history. Building off the concepts and thematic elements in his earlier shorter works (most notably A Walk Through H and Vertical Features Remake), Peter Greenaway's The Falls is an absurd 3+ hours told through 92 short mockumentaries. The magic of the movie is not in the unfolding of the mystery of what's happening (a vague, apocalyptic occurrence referred to as the "Violent Unknown Event" or "VUE" and its decades-long aftermath) but rather in the pressing of the viewer to ask if what's happening has ANY meaning at all. Professor Amy Lawrence in her book 'The Films of Peter Greenaway' called The Falls "a tribute to bureaucratic zeal, a monument to

systems for the organization of data and those who use them," and it's hard to argue any of that. The idea that when we have all the data (or at least 185 minutes of it), we really have none of it is perhaps more prescient now than ever.

The shorts here are all devoted to 92 people with last names all beginning with the letters "FALL," 92 people with impossible names like Castenarm Fallast, 92 of the ~19,000,000 people total in the directory who have been inflicted by the V.U.E., or as the narrator tells us: "a reasonable cross section." (That any of this is reasonable is as pure a joke as you'll find.) They are told, shot and presented in wildly varying documentary styles; the only thing gluing them together, apart from the very nice and stylized "name and number" title cards, is the music, primarily Greenaway's longtime collaborator, the genius composer Michael Nyman, but with an assist from another young British up and comer you might have heard of: Brian Eno (there are, in fact, some early versions/motifs from the early Eno solo catalog repackaged here). The score is itself a work of art.

To dissect the "plot" or "story" is, again, besides the point. You don't have to read the New York Times' 1983 review; that they labeled it both comedy and science fiction is telling enough. One of the widespread side effects of the V.U.E. is that its victims spontaneously learned previously unknown languages. There's comedy in the fact that we can create vast systems of connection and never glean the true meaning of anything. There are repeated mentions of mostly unseen body horror as well. Essentially, the effected humans are slowly transforming into terrifying birds. It's science fiction by even the loosest metric, but as the surgically tight vignettes wash over you, it's really the latter that sticks out more. Sometimes you just have to laugh at this crazy thing we've built.

And that's why The Falls is a landmark cinematic achievement. It makes us look at these systems, these manmade containers for all that matters, all facets of culture, and we can only shrug. This is the best we can do?

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 566A - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 567 ⫸

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The Falls is a 1980 film directed by Peter Greenaway. It was Greenaway's first feature-length film after many years making shorts. It does not have a traditional dramatic narrative; it takes the form of a mock documentary in 92 short parts. It was released on May 3, 1980.