Director/writer/star Tyler Cole’s Falling Sons follows the contentious reunion of brothers Jordan Somerset (Dan Bennett) and Malcolm Somerset (Tyler Cole). They are coming together reluctantly to make arrangements after their father Carl (Chris Hill) dies. The action is set a few days after Carl’s death, when the grief and anger are raw for both men.
They have wildly disparate personalities that naturally grate on each other, and that makes it all the worse when they get to the core issue between them. The real anger stems from the fact that when Carl had cancer for so long, Malcolm stayed with his father and saw him through to the end, while Jordan fled the family and turned his attention to his faith and church. He abandoned his brother and father in their hour of greatest need. Years passed, and the recriminations festered, each brother feeling the other had wronged him.
Jordan is a natural people-pleaser who doesn’t stand up for himself. When they are forced together to deal with the immediate demands of the estate, they wind up in a series of combative arguments. Each of them expresses disdain for the other’s approach to life and people. Jordan is too weak and indecisive, according to Malcolm. From Jordan’s point of view, Malcolm is a careless drunk who has no goal in life. The film follows the brothers as they surface their grievances in verbal combat and sometimes physical altercations, something they likely would not have done if Carl was still alive. Will they reconcile and come to some sort of equilibrium in the time they spend together?
“…the contentious, reluctant reunion of estranged brothers after their father dies…”
Falling Sons follows on the heels of Cole’s Deacon as a change of pace from the serial killer in that film. This film accomplishes much from the limited resource they had at their disposal. The sets are found locations like houses and woods, and there’s no soundtrack to speak of. The lighting is adequate, mostly natural available light. The camera work is passable. The audio quality is surprisingly quite good, particularly for the dialogue, and that is often not the case in a zero budget film. The pacing is slow, and it does run too long. Clocking in at almost 120 minutes, the film would greatly benefit from an aggressive edit to the Indie standard runtime of around 90 minutes. The script and performances could be tighter to achieve that, many lines are delivered slowly, and the thoughts are repeated. The dialogue is too much like real people in conversation, and needs to be tuned to stylized “movie talk.”
Cole talks about the struggles to finish his no-budget film. “It was an arduous 16 week shoot (filming two days per week only) and in between we were rehearsing and improvising. Some of the most difficult days were up in the mountains, where it took an hour and half to reach before dawn on the winding hills. After several years of editing, it was finally ready, and a great many have identified with the story in a way I never thought possible. So many strangers have reached out to let me know that it touched their heart…”
Falling Sons is a fine example of a zero-budget project executed by filmmakers who have experience in the space, telling an emotionally compelling story.
Learn more at the official Falling Sons website
"…emotionally compelling..."
