'Falling' review: Viggo Mortensen excels in heart-piercing drama

Get ready to discover a new side to Viggo Mortensen, a three-time Oscar nominee.

The 62-year-old multi-talented actor stands out "Falling," his directorial debut. The heart-piercing human drama displays all the traits that define Mortensen as an actor: strength, sensitivity and offbeat humor.

Mortensen, who also wrote, scored and co-produced "Falling," excels as John Peterson, a gay man coping with a homophobic father plagued by dementia. The ornery old man, Willis, is played by veteran actor Lance Henriksen, who has starred in "Aliens" and played a vampire leader in "Near Dark." Henriksen delivers the fullest and finest performance of his career.

Lovable is not a quality you'd apply to Willis, who's alienated two wives by calling them "whores" and railing against "fairies" and any racial minority you can name. Yet his pilot son is unstinting in his monk-like patience. In a frantic, late-night scene on a jet flight, Willis, lost in his own head, thrashes around in the passenger cabin until John settles him down. The panicky confusion of both father and son is vividly and movingly rendered by Mortensen.

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Willis, who knows he can no longer care for himself on a remote farm in upstate New York, moves into the SoCal home that John shares with his husband, Eric (Terry Chen), and their daughter Monica (Gabby Velis). As expected, Willis opens fire, especially when Willis' daughter Sarah, poignantly played by Laura Linney, visits with her teen children.

"Why do you ruin everything," asks Sarah's son, whose dyed hair sends Willis into insult overdrive. "I promised myself I was not going to rise to the bait," says John, whose words make it clear he has done just that many times before.

Why would this cruel curmudgeon inspire Mortensen to make a movie about him? The answer is complicated and intensely personal. Though the film is fiction, Mortensen has admitted to dealing with the pain of parental dementia. It's apparent from the start that Mortensen is not a filmmaker willing to spell things out or tell audiences how to think. Instead, his film flashes to moments from the past that illustrate a world of hurt for both men.

There's a telling moment when young Willis (Sverrir Gudnason) brings wife Gwen (a lovely Hannah Gross) and the newborn John home to the farm and this young father whispers to his son, "I'm sorry I brought you into this world -- to die." It's evident that Willis has suffered in ways the film only infers. Later, Willis is out on a lake teaching 4-year-old John (Grady McKenzie) how to shoot his first duck and shows a surprising tenderness when the boy begs to bathe and sleep with the animal. Nature seems to bring out of a softer side in Willis that he is tragically unable to transfer to humans.

To his credit, Mortensen never tries to excuse or redeem Willis. Instead, like the tolerant John, Mortensen offers understanding as perhaps the only viable path to ending a cycle of abuse. "Falling" is a movie that stays in your head a long time after its quietly devastating final scene. As Mortensen intended, it takes a piece out of you.