The Falls

[Velorath]

A movie from director Peter Greenaway, I watched directly due to a recommendation from schild.  He insisted I watch it without reading anything about it, so I'll respect his judgement and not say anything about the plot of this movie.  I ordered it, and from there it was probably a year or so before I convinced myself to watch it (as a side note, the, version I ordered was called "The Early Films of Peter Greenaway: The Falls"").  It's probably been close to a year from the time I've watched it to now, when I'm posting a thread about it.  It's also worth noting that I watched it shortly after watching Koyaanisqatsi , which is already enough to drive a man insane when viewed in one sitting (Philip Glass is very much an acquired taste, but one I've come to love).

Long story short, either schild was trolling the fuck out of me, or he's absolutely brilliant when it comes to movie recommendations.  I still haven't decided yet.  If anyone is unable to track down a copy of this film though, I will send them out my copy, so long as they agree to send it out to the next f13 forum dweller who requests it.

[Engels]

Available as a rental from Netflix, fyi.

[schild]

Took you long enough.

[stu]

I wasn't familiar with Greenaway, but the Koyaanisqatsi reference was enough to get me interested. I put this at the top of my Netflix queue after reading the OP and made some time to watch it today. Pretty damn good, and definitely unique. I'm sure this is the most inventive thing I've seen.

I noticed Brian Eno's name for the additional music credits. Cool. Is there a subtitled version? This movie is dense with info, and I feel like I missed a lot.

Thanks for the recommendation.

[Velorath]

Took you long enough.

It's a 4 hour long movie that I knew nothing about that I was watching based solely on your recommendation.  It's also not the kind of thing you can just put on as background while you're doing something else.  I had to set aside a 4 hour block of time to commit to watching this which is really hard given the number of distractions I have readily available.  Plus I know maybe one person who appreciates film enough to grok this movie, so I knew watching this was likely going to be a solo endeavor for me also.

Not to scare anybody away from watching it.  Like Stu said, it's really is unique and inventive, and it makes you realize how much more you could do with film besides just telling 2 hour long narratives, which is partially why I mentioned Koyaanisqatsi in the OP also.  It's a shame that we generally have to look back a few decades to find examples of this kind of experimentation in film making (maybe there are more recent examples but nothing comes to mind).  The Falls to me in many ways is an exercise in world-building, in the same way that World War Z creates a history of a world changed by a singular event through a government's attempt at compiling information about many of the people involved.  The difference is that World War Z still manages to do this in a somewhat more conventional fashion in that it's essentially a series of short stories in chronologically order, and told through various characters points of view.  The Falls takes a much more clinical and emotionally detached approach (plus the world changing event here is something that is a lot more disturbing to me than a zombie apocalypse, if for no other reason than because it is so much more unique).

[schild]

Well I'm glad you set aside the time. It's on a short list of movies that isn't "the best I've seen" but more like "the most interesting I've seen."

[DraconianOne]

Greenaway's definitely an acquired taste and if you're not into visual expressionism then you'll probably hate his stuff. I haven't seen "The Falls" but did quite enjoy a lot of his earlier stuff. I'd probably rate "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" as his most accessible movie followed by "The Draughtsman's Contract".  I personally couldn't stand "Prospero's Books" but mostly because I hated "The Tempest". It was visually stunning though.

[Wasted]

Drowning by Numbers is my favourite Greenaway film.  I haven't seen The Falls, it's probably going to be hard to find here.

[DraconianOne]

Where's here?

[Wasted]

Adelaide, South Australia