Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman
Falling Down: The adventures of an ordinary man at
war with the everyday world
Think of a few literary characters or
movie characters who made an indelible mark on you. Ask yourself, why
do I remember these particular characters when I've forgotten so many
others? What makes these characters, but not others, memorable?
Probably, you will identify certain
characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and even
views of the world. The characters you admire will probably have
acted honorably, valorously, heroically. Those you recall, perhaps
with a shudder, feeling fear, disgust, or horror, as evil or
dangerous probably strike you as contemptible or loathsome because
of, paradoxically, their characteristics, behaviors, attitudes,
values, beliefs, and world views. While the admirable characters
support others, the contemptible are usually interested in serving
only themselves. More specifically, though, how are
characters sketched by writers?
Most are collections of personality
traits. These traits are then implied through the characters'
actions, or behavior, including the words they speak, that is,
through dialogue. In movies and, more than ever before, in novels,
behavior is the means by which personality traits, attitudes, values,
beliefs, and world views are shown.
In the thriller Falling Down (1993),
William Foster, an unemployed engineer, sees society as “falling
down” right before his eyes. While the movie leaves no doubt that
society is, in fact, in a state of partial collapse, it is also true
that Foster himself is “falling down.” He's lost his job. His
marriage has ended in divorce. His ex-wife, Beth, has been awarded
sole custody of their daughter Adele, and has secured a restraining
order against Foster, who has a penchant to act aggressively, even
violently, toward others, including, apparently, Beth herself. Foster
has lied to his mother, with whom he stays, telling her that he is
still employed. In fact, he carries an empty briefcase around town,
wearing out shoe leather as he wanders more or less aimlessly until
he conceives of the idea of visiting Adele on her birthday, despite
the restraining order that has been issued against him and Beth's
clear demands that he avoid contact with her and Adele.
Throughout the film, as Foster
encounters escalating example after example of the increasingly
extreme societal decline he is convinced has overtaken life in Los
Angeles and, perhaps the United States as well, he himself collapses
further and further psychologically and he reacts to the instances of
social decline with more and more extreme behavior, ratcheting up his
aggression and violence, revealing himself to be a truly unstable and
dangerous man.
In the film, social decline is
reflected by other types of decline as well—declines in technology,
in government, in civility, in business relations, in attitudes
regarding racial and gender equality, and in class privilege.
Heavy traffic
On a terribly hot day, the air
conditioner in Foster's car won't work. He abandons the vehicle,
leaving it in a traffic jam, and sets off on foot across the city.
My rights as a consumer
Wanting change to call his
ex-wife, he asks for, but is refused, change for a dollar. He is told
that he must buy something first. He reacts by breaking up the
proprietor's merchandise and ranting about his greed. Foster also
takes issue with the owner's pronunciation of “five” as “”fie,”
insulting him by telling him that, as an immigrant, he should have
“the grace to learn the language,” especially after all the money
the United States has given the store owner's country.
Territorial dispute
Next, he encounters two Latin street
thugs who try to rob him. Foster uses a baseball bat to beat them
into retreat and picks up a gun one of them drops. Later, these
thugs, accompanied by other gang members, spray bullets at Foster
during a drive by, missing their target but wounding several innocent
bystanders. When they wreck, Foster takes their cache of guns,
shooting the diver in the leg.
Ganging up on D-Fens
At a park, Foster is accosted by an
aggressive panhandler after he sees rude people shoving others as
they storm a bus that has stopped to pick up passengers, a billboard
decrying child abuse, and alcoholics openly drinking in public. He
flings his briefcase at the panhandler, telling him he can have it.
Inside, the angry panhandler finds nothing but a sandwich and an
apple—the lunch Foster's mother had packed for him.
Late for breakfast
Foster's attempt to order breakfast a
few minutes after a fast-food restaurant has changed to its lunch
menu elicits sarcastic, condescending remarks from the server and the
restaurant's manager. Foster responds by shooting an automatic rifle
into the ceiling and terrifying both the staff and the diners, before
leaving. Although, once he resorts to gunfire, the manager fills
Foster's breakfast order, he leaves the food behind, saying the fries
are limp and cold and the hamburger looks nothing like the one shown
in the oversize photograph that advertises it.
Not economically viableVisiting a
swat meet to buy a birthday present for Adele, Foster observes a
young black man in a business suit lamenting a bank's refusal to
grant him a loan, crying to passersby, as he is being arrested, “I'm
not economically viable.” He catches Foster's eye. “Remember me,”
he says, and Foster nods.
Out of order
When he attempts to make a telephone
call to Beth, a man rants at him from outside the telephone booth,
demanding that he hurry. Foster reacts by shooting up the booth with
an automatic rifle. “I think it's out of order,” he tells the
terrified man.
Nick's back room: "I'm with you"
In an army surplus store, which
Foster visits to buy a pair of boots to replace his worn shoes, he
encounters the store's sexist, racist neo-Nazi proprietor, who
insults a female detective and a gay couple before turning on Foster,
when Foster denies being “just like” him, and attempts to hold
Foster at gunpoint until the police he plans to summon arrive. Foster
manages to kill the neo-Nazi befolatere continuing his trip across
town.
Something to fix
Suspecting road work is not needed
but is underway simply to waste taxpayers' money by providing work
for the city's department of transportation workers, Foster uses a
rocket-propelled grenade launcher he has taken from the street thugs
to destroy a tunnel in order to give them some actual work to do.
Passing through
At a gold course, he shoots a golf
cart after a golfer challenges his presence on the course, claiming
that the links belong solely to him and the other members of the
country club upon whose property Foster trespasses. The irate
golfer's nitroglycerin pills are aboard the cart, which coasts
downhill, into a lake, leaving the golfer, who has a heart attack
when Foster shoots at the cart, to die “wearing [his] funny little
hat.”
Obsolete; like it was before
After climbing a wall that surrounds
an exclusive estate, Foster briefly kidnaps the caretaker, his wife,
and their young daughter, as he hides from a helicopter flying over
the area. When he learns that the estate is owned by a plastic
surgeon, Foster says “the system” has betrayed him, rewarding the
plastic surgeon, whose work, he implies, is merely aesthetic, rather
than rewarding him, an engineer whose work in the defense industry
protects America. When he realizes he has frightened the girl, he
leaves the family, resuming his trek, now that the helicopter has
left the area.
Officer down and the pier: all points
converge
Finally, toward the end of the movie,
after shooting Detective Sandra Torres, Foster holds his wife at
gunpoint, intending, Sergeant Prendergast says, to shoot them.
End Credits
In addition to showing Foster's
personality—his traits, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and
world view—as he reacts to various incidents which confirm his
belief that society is “falling down,” even as his own psyche
collapses, the film shows how inappropriate, unnecessary, and
dangerous his reactions are by contrasting them with another
character who encounters similar problems as those which face Foster.
Using a foil, a character whose behaviors, attitudes, values,
beliefs, and world view strongly contrasts with those of another,
opposing character, is a tried and true means of characterization
which Falling Down uses to good effect.
Prendergast is Foster's foil. Foster
has “lost” a daughter; Prendergast has lost one through the
girl's death. Foster's marriage has ended in divorce. Prendergast's
wife, Amanda, suffers from anxiety, which makes her feel the need to
control her environment and to order both her own and Prendergast's
lives. Foster has been fired from his job. Despite less-than-ideal
working conditions, Prendergast wants to remain on the Los Angeles
Police Department's force, but Amanda wants him to retire to Lake
Havasu City, Arizona. Both Foster and Prendergast see a collapse of
social traditions, organizations, institutions, and mores, but—and
here is the chief difference between these men who, to a large
degree, live rather parallel lives—Foster feels cheated by “the
system” and wants what he considers to be his due, whereas
Prendergast is content to prop up society and to help to protect and
defend it against its threats, including Foster himself. The use of
Prendergast as Foster's foil more sharply defines the
characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world
views of both the unemployed defense engineer and the detective.
Note: The subheadings are from the
"Scene Index" for the film, as provided on its DVD release.
No comments:
Post a Comment