Before the Fall

I am 94 years old, born in 1923. In 1938, at the age of 15, I entered a major Ivy League university, graduating in 1941, something of a record at that time. On December 11, 1941, at 18 years of age, I joined the U.S. Navy because I was angry about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Because of my talent, education, personal ambition, and considerable political pull, I received a commission in the U.S. Navy, being assigned to Naval Intelligence. World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and thereafter saw me retire at the rank of Naval Captain. Through it all, twice I was shot up pretty good, and twice I was told by doctors -- in effect -- that I was a hard man to kill, followed of course by what we would now call PTSD and very bad memories, but not to forget those endlessly repeated very bad dreams experienced to this day.

The good news is that you seldom find a senior career intelligence officer and combat ship captain in retirement who is poor. The skills, experience, knowledge and insights acquired, and priceless personal contacts thereby garnered frequently transfer favorably to the world of business.

Which brings me to "Before the Fall" (2016), written and directed by Byrum Geisler.

Ah yes, my marriage. Strip away the time frame, the civilian dress, the historical peculiarities, and especially the lack of reference to war, to killing, and to the absence of marshal mayhem generally and the eventually righted miscarriage of UCMJ justice that I personally engineered out of a sense of simple justice and out of my passionate, my absolute consuming interest in the object of my desire, you will find the accurate beginning of the latticework of my life-long love affair, who unhappily died before I did.

The clown responsible for the UCMJ miscarriage of justice was eventually keelhauled by the Navy in a fashion similar to the tender mercies of the Virginia state bar as described in "Before the Fall". To my complete satisfaction.

I salute Mr. Geisler and his crew and staff for their subtle and sophisticated rendering of a slice of life drawn, in my opinion, and especially in my experience from real life, gay or straight.

Or gay AND straight, because from this movie, both apply.

Parenthetically, the cinematography is excellent.

I give this fine movie an IMDb rating of 7.0.

Before the Fall is bad in every way. Terrible screenplay, terrible direction, terrible acting. Even the potentially beautiful Appalachian Mountains setting (which state it's supposed to be is debatable, but the mountains are not) is ruined by the overwhelming STUPIDITY of everything else. I mean, what lawyer conducts a confidential interview, discussing a third person in a way that would qualify as slander anywhere on earth, in the public hallway of his office, directly in front of the waiting room door, for anybody who may be waiting there to hear?

The whole movie is like that: stupid people saying and doing unvaryingly stupid things in the most unrealistic, unbelievable way possible. And there's an extremely annoying, cloying synthesizer-piano muzak soundtrack, the same dull, soporific notes played over and over, oozing its sappy way through every scene, constantly underlining the unrelenting stupidity of everything we see and hear.

I HATE this movie! The guy who plays Lee is gorgeous -- and I mean breathtaking -- but, just like the mountains, his beauty is buried in the mudslide of stupidity that swallows everything in its path.

Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen's best work by far, one of the finest and most deeply satisfying novels ever written. It's so good that it has survived many bad adaptations, including this one. But writer-director Byrum Geisler (whoever he is) really shouldn't have told anybody what he was trying to do, because his failure is so monumental that he SHOULD be too embarrassed now to show his face anywhere. There is no HINT of Pride and Prejudice, or any of its marvelous characters, STILL alive 200 years after she created them -- not the tiniest spark of Austen's genius -- anywhere in this stupid movie.

In case you were wondering how the title related to Pride and Prejudice, "Before the fall" is from Proverbs in the Bible. That should have been obvious to me, but I had to look it up. I knew the proverb, and I knew Pride and Prejudice, but I didn't make the connection.

That's because this reinterpretation has turned Jane Austen's characters upside down. D'Arcy and Bingley are poor, not rich, and (characters equivalent to) the Bennett sisters are concerned about marrying beneath their status rather than above.

That's clever, and one of the few reinterpretations of Pride & Prejudice that's not a poor imitation, it's completely different. Pride & Prejudice is a social satire, and a comedy of manners. This film, on the other hand, isn't funny. There is a little comic relief, but it's feeble and the film would have been better without it.

By no means is the dialog scintillating, and some plot devices are pretty weak (though probably no less contrived than Austen's). I personally was annoyed by the maudlin piano soundtrack in scenes where it was not only unnecessary, it was distracting.

There are additional flaws that one could complain about, but overall I found myself able to overlook them. There is a lot to admire here, and it easily drew me in. I'd say give it a chance, especially if you are a fan of Jane Austen.

This film is based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and it borrows quite a bit from its source, but it is very much its own story. The differences are enough to allow it to be judged on its own. The gorgeous Virginia and Great Smoky mountain scenery only enhance the beauty of the film. The characters are believable in their flawed reality. There is comic relief at times, even campy silliness with a couple characters, but they really don't detract from the poignant plot progression. These people feel very real, perhaps even like people we know. Yes, all of them; the main characters, the friends, the girlfriends. Most of us know people like this, might want to step into the story and have a stern talk with them (or more). The slow pace may put off some viewers who would be impatient for the story to move along, for the characters to just "get over themselves." Let them be. They will work it all out the best way they can.

Solid with a somber, low-key tone. It begins slowly, but draws you in due to the fine performances and lush photography. Very good, and definitely worth a look.