Falling Down

Portrait of early-90s anxieties

06 December 2008

Michael Douglas is having a really really bad day. This film, from 1993, is about much more than one man in a bad mood of course – what we have here is a look at the Los Angeles of the early nineties. A city in decay, with no apparent morals or guiding principles, which can be taken as an extension for the rest of America, and even the Western world. We meet William ‘D-FENS’ Foster (Douglas), a seemingly ordinary man, stuck in in traffic on his way to see his daughter. Things soon begin to go wrong, from the unmoving cars, the stifling heat, the Korean shopkeeper… It all builds until Foster snaps. He can no longer take it, and so subsequently deals with each mishap with increasing violence and retribution. Director Joel Schumacher cranks up the tension, and, while we can not completely condone D-FENS, we do understand where he is coming from.

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