shaffinmerx
Pride is one thing. Then there is serendipity. "Before the Fall" popped up on my Amazon Recommended queue last week, and my first thought was not kind based on the cover art."Before the Fall" is so much more - a movie on the nature of moral sentiments. For those who think "Before the Fall" is about a romance or two, I have news - it's equally about goodness. This is deeply humanistic film. If "Before the Fall" has the hots for anything, it is kindness. This is a movie about desire and manners, but which play out as something larger, with Ben Bennett (Ethan Sharrett) as the movie's exemplar. It has a lot of Ben in itself, which is why I wish some things had been framed differently. The review version I posted at Amazon, under Orton Redux, includes a start-to-finish Fan Edit (same review title: "Praise, and a Fan Edit The Morning After").From the credits, I gather that this production is very much a collective effort. In which case, let's praise everyone, starting with director Byrum Geisler. The filmmakers have created a distinctive world worth visiting more than once. Supported every step of the way by Adi Goldstein's stellar score, and Brandon Garza's expansive cinematography, the mise-en-scene achieves something extraordinary: a narrative that is consistently, pleasurably immersive. The movie's awareness extends to its class consciousness - as the two romances inspired by "Pride and Prejudice" unfold, a widening social milieu opens. Unexpected is what is not said from in scenes short and long: desire mingles with human flaws, injustice with justice, and poverty with outreach emotional and otherwise. "Before the Fall" achieves a memorably resonant interplay of flawed, beautiful characters who are more often than not (to steal a page from "Before the Fall") also good people.Two star-making performances enrich "Before the Fall". One needs more structural support from the filmmakers, and I've gone into this in the Fan Edit at Amazon. Then there is Ethan Sharrett's performance as Ben. No matter where he is in the frame, Sharrett anchors the movie. He is right up there in my estimation with the score, direction and cinematography. When I looked up his other roles, I was astonished how the "Paradox Alice" physicality had morphed into Ben - the gait, the cadence, and a confidence that far rom stealing scenes, does something generous: it enriches the entire ensemble. Sexuality is never the issue with Ben: doing the right thing is. A lot of boy scout rises up in Ben, and damned if every expression of it doesn't work gangbusters. A pleasurable example is the half-beat pause around Lee (Chase Conner) as Ben's smile and the breath falter mid-expression, this from a character who is otherwise well-suited and together. If one can ever will into being the movies in one's head - a long-overdue remake of "The Conformist" with the American surveillance state as the backdrop, or an American take on Karim Aïnouz's "Futuro Beach", or a fun revisit with a new "The Last of Sheila" - here is my one and only submission for the A-list.If we're projecting, then a message for everyone involved: that your collective investment in these characters not be let go too easily. Ben, Lee, Jane Gardiner (Brandi Price) and Chuck Bingley (Jason Mac) are immensely attractive characters for all the right reasons. Set in southwest Virginia, "Before the Fall" already proffers narratives beyond the main stories here. Before the movie has ended, we take in poverty, nature conservation, the law (including an assistant prosecutor you want to see again), unseen "political buddies", and I can't be the only one who thinks that George Wickham (Jonathan Horvath) wants revenge, rather like Darth Vader at the end of Star Wars Episode IV. A sequel or limited series would let the core quintet loose, now that the groundwork has been laid. This, too, would be faithful to the historic response to "Pride and Prejudice", which has spun myriad, and often disparate, sequels.The core of "Before the Fall" - a solid hour - is a state of grace. Perplexing are the ways in which the filmmakers don't fully anchor what they've got with Lee and Ben. If the camera can go DePalma (close) - twice - on a heterosexual kiss, then the least the film syntax can do is give back more to Ben and Lee. By this, I mean more than the length and nature of a same-sex kiss, when it arrives. The movie would benefit greatly by loosening its grip on Lee. This would release more agency in Lee via Chase Conner's characterization. Conner gets emotionally powerful scenes, yet the movie lets him down more than once, by not cutting at the right moment, by leaving in an extraneous line of dialogue, by dissipating a shot's impact by playing it too long.Our focus is compromised from the start, in the way the film sets itself up, then intercuts between Lee and Ben, then throws in a dissolve flashback. The opening scene doesn't do the work it's supposed to: and we are left with a clunky flashback structure quickly forgotten. As the movie stands, we are also left with the distinct sense that Ben is doing the heavy lifting. Greater attractions exists between Lee and an anonymous pick-up (take it as a pun), and especially between Lee and Chuck. The way around these competing relationships is not to reduce their screen time, but to achieve greater emphasis elsewhere: accentuate what is already there - a deeper pain in Lee and a stronger evolving interest in Ben.Within the confines of the film, and assuming no other footage, such an alternate structure exists. See the Fan Edit at Amazon, based on Amazon time signatures. Since my intention was only to build with what I saw, I take nothing away from the filmmakers behind and in front of the camera, and what they accomplished, which is why the review there is, and will remain, 5-stars.
johnfox-56042
I am 94 years old, born in 1923. In 1938, at the age of 15, I entered a major Ivy League university, graduating in 1941, something of a record at that time. On December 11, 1941, at 18 years of age, I joined the U.S. Navy because I was angry about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Because of my talent, education, personal ambition, and considerable political pull, I received a commission in the U.S. Navy, being assigned to Naval Intelligence. World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and thereafter saw me retire at the rank of Naval Captain. Through it all, twice I was shot up pretty good, and twice I was told by doctors -- in effect -- that I was a hard man to kill, followed of course by what we would now call PTSD and very bad memories, but not to forget those endlessly repeated very bad dreams experienced to this day.The good news is that you seldom find a senior career intelligence officer and combat ship captain in retirement who is poor. The skills, experience, knowledge and insights acquired, and priceless personal contacts thereby garnered frequently transfer favorably to the world of business.Which brings me to "Before the Fall" (2016), written and directed by Byrum Geisler.Ah yes, my marriage. Strip away the time frame, the civilian dress, the historical peculiarities, and especially the lack of reference to war, to killing, and to the absence of marshal mayhem generally and the eventually righted miscarriage of UCMJ justice that I personally engineered out of a sense of simple justice and out of my passionate, my absolute consuming interest in the object of my desire, you will find the accurate beginning of the latticework of my life-long love affair, who unhappily died before I did.The clown responsible for the UCMJ miscarriage of justice was eventually keelhauled by the Navy in a fashion similar to the tender mercies of the Virginia state bar as described in "Before the Fall". To my complete satisfaction.I salute Mr. Geisler and his crew and staff for their subtle and sophisticated rendering of a slice of life drawn, in my opinion, and especially in my experience from real life, gay or straight.Or gay AND straight, because from this movie, both apply.Parenthetically, the cinematography is excellent.I give this fine movie an IMDb rating of 7.0.
