I'm pleased to see so many positive reviews of this unique film. I entirely agree that it needs to be seen in a cinema to get the full relentless effect. It's also worth persevering to the end as Greenaway lightens up a bit and gives you a few more clues. In a way it's a shame that he got drawn into narrative cinema after this because The Falls seems a much more original and appropriate vehicle for his talents.
As with his earlier short films, various bits of disparate footage, old photos and other assorted nonsense are woven together with an elaborate cover story, in this case the Violent Unknown Event, which among other things is a metaphor for nuclear calamity (92 is the atomic number of uranium, "Fall" can refer to the fall of man).
Along the way we find a cornucopia of references to Greenaway films past and still to be made - principally A Zed and Two Noughts and Drowning by Numbers - running gags, in-jokes, academic pastiche, whimsical storytelling, different film techniques and ways of constructing reality. Where the average video artwork concentrates on form and style, Greenaway gives us an overdose of content.
It's worth noting that the 92 biographies in the film represent only those victims of the VUE whose names begin with the letters FALL. If you take the whole alphabet into account there are 19 million cases. You get the feeling he really, really wanted to show all 19 million.
Greenaway's new project "The Tulse Luper Suitcase" is apparently a remake or extension of "The Falls" using more modern technology. A definite must-see but it will be hard to top this for sheer demented monomaniacal verve.
