Just watched

I saw this last night on amc and was pleased with the experience. First, this is what I think of as a "2 in 1": A movie that makes a hard left (or right, I guess) turn into something unexpected. "High and Low" goes from a study of Japanese business and values into a straight-forward study in police procedure, one of the best, I think. Audition, another Japanese film, goes from a dating game into well, if you've seen it, you know. And how about "Smilla's Sense of Snow"? A whodunit with essays on relations and some intiquing social insights, then into a megaconspiracy and somewhatt sci-fi.

I take "Falls" as one of those. The first majority of the movie is a lean, taut pursuit Western, developing characters out of minimal dialogue and sparse flashbacks. Then, at some point near the end, things go into another realm, literally and metaphorically. Another post in these discussions gives one heck of an analysis, which holds water as well as any I've ever read. Pardon the pun, because I wouod like to add something about water and liquids in general. As Charon described it, the water was life, and nothing was free there. I am not forcing JudeoChristian theory on this movie, BUT I can not help but remember, by analogy, Jesus' description of the drink from which one never thirsted again. So, I see spirituality here, obviously, but again not necessarily from a Christian perspective.

Maybe this was a kind of Purgatory, a place between worlds, where one still had some ability to remedy one's shortcomings. The "devil" figure would be in such a place, to seal a deal or turn one back over. "She" bargained for Carver's water, and after all was said and done, Gideon gave Carver a drink, which seemed to work wonders. I thought about this in the context of the "cure-all" offered to Gideon free of charge, who didn't even try to catch it. He was further along a path to redemption, and hadn't done the things Carver had so recently in life, and perhaps that was a last-ditch effort to get him back to the fold. Regardless, beyond the obvious observation of each man having something differetn to bargain, and as some other writers have noted, her approach and thus probably motives were different for the two.

Right or wrong, I like this this movie because it reminds of "Bladerunner," making us wonder, from the perspective of the main characters, the essential questions: Who we are, how we got there, where we are going, and how long we have. My very first post on IMDB is now over.