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Taub's World War II movie "The Fallen"
is hard to describe, and maybe that's why it never
really hits its stride, seemingly content to
simply amble on until it gets tired and
just…stops. Starring a surprisingly good bunch
of actors you've never heard of and shot for what
must been a minor budget, the film follows four
groups of disparate characters -- a band of
cowardly American quartermasters (supply men), a
goofball bunch of Italian Army Regulars, a local
Italian Mafioso and his bumbling henchmen, and the
stout Germans holed up near the Gothic Line in the
Italian mountains.
"The Fallen" opens
with a non sequitur sequence that has one of the
American supply men attempting to sell
(presumably) stolen French wine to a local Italian
gangster name Rossini. The two agree to meet again
at sundown, but when the American doesn't show up,
the Italian gangster simply shrugs it off. We
later see the gangsters again as they murder and
pillage German troops moving up and down the
Italian road. For soldiers, these guys are
incredibly easy to kill. You'd think men who have
been fighting for years in a World War could hold
out against a fat Italian gangster and his small
band of Three Stooges henchmen, but apparently
not.
Where was I? Right, the
Americans. Led by their boozing Sergeant, the
supply men have been dispatched to the front
lines, where they are to resupply their fighting
counterparts. Along the way, they run across some
Italian refugees, a house full of willing women,
and then -- well, they sort of disappear for a
while. But no worries, soon we are with a small
unit of Italian Regulars as they join up with
their German comrades stationed near the front
lines, although they themselves do not see any
action unless you consider the Italian Partisans
(Communists resisting the German occupation) who
(literally) pop out of the woodworks to take shots
at them at various intervals.
There is no "main"
storyline in "The Fallen"; the film is
simply about soldiers who aren't really good at
soldiering, wandering about in a war zone that
feels more like Sunday strolls through
Central Park
. Directed by Ari Taub on what must have been a
very small budget (there are no large military
engagements, and even the film's few minor
skirmishes are poorly executed), "The
Fallen" has a number of things going for it.
The film's best element is its languid, meandering
quality, working from a script that has little
interest in any type of recognizable narrative or
traditional plotting. It's anybody's guess whose
story this is; and perhaps, it's no one's story,
and everyone's.
An excellent decision by the
filmmakers was to cast native speakers for the
roles and have them speak their own native tongue
rather than force feed the audience English. This
gives the film a much needed boost in the reality
department, especially since the film seems overly
too comical sometimes for a movie that has people
getting shot in the head and being blown up by
tanks. The music comes and goes, including some
unnecessary "jokey" music that seems to
have been lifted directly from some cheesy 1970s
Italian comedy.
A smart idea might have been
to cut down the cast by at least half, if not
more, which would also excise some of the film's
curiously many loose threads. On more than one
occasion, the script simply sends characters off
screen, never to be heard from again. This might
explain the rushed Third Act, where the film
stumbles mightily to get to the finish line. In
fact, the ending is so abrupt that for a moment
one almost suspects we're watching the first day
of a 3-day mini-series. Surely, there must be
more. After following these characters around for
90 minutes, the film's flippant disregard for
their fates is just a tad annoying.
Nevertheless, Taub should be
congratulated for making an entertaining and
off-beat war film when such a thing shouldn't be
possible without an ungodly
Hollywood
budget and an army for a crew. Taub's film also
has a very noticeable European sensibility to many
parts of it, including the sometimes grainy
picture and sometimes poorly post-dubbed voice
work. It might also remind viewers of Francois
Truffaut's films, in that "The Fallen"
seems to have no real thrusting plot, but instead
a central core that allows for tandem and multiple
plots that don't necessarily go anywhere.
Many reviewers on the
Internet have grabbed onto the film as some sort
of anti-war movie, but this may be a case of
biased observers injecting political beliefs into
a movie. If anything, "The Fallen" seems
to not care about the politics behind the events
of the war, just the men caught up in them. Human
nature, it seems to be saying, is more important
than human events, and even in the large scheme of
things, it's still the individual that matters
most. Then again, maybe Ari Taub just couldn't
figure out how to make a proper film, so decided
to make one about some people running around in
the Italian mountains yukking it up. You decide.
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