The second scene shows the young man in a public square in front of some TV camera doing an interview. Next we find him inside the sitting room of a modern apartment in front of a huge TV screen watching himself on what was filmed a little earlier. At his side is a young woman trying to caress and tease him. He locks her in an embrace. She talks about changing to a new flat because she is pregnant. He looks a bit surprised. The girl asks him if he is glad. He hesitates a little and says, "Sure" and kisses her. We learn that they had been together for two years. He looks a bit surprised that they had been together for that long.
Next we see the young man speeding in a car along a super highway, his face worried. He reaches the reception counter of a mental hospital, asks for his father and says he has been called by someone at the hospital. They ask him who that may be. He says it's Janiki. They check through the records and tells him that the man is on the third floor. He goes up and see various mental patients in white hospital robes in what looks like a common room. One of them, with his back against him sitting in front of the TV is watching the news. He finds his own face on the TV screen. He watches him for a while and moves into the room. He looks into the eyes of his father and says , "Dad. Long time no see. How do you feel? ". His father looks at him, without any expression, without a word. He repeats the question. Still it draws only a blank face. He is angry and tells his father that he has driven 300 KM all the way from Warsaw just to see him and his father hasn't got a single word for him to tell how he is doing or how he feels. The father remains wordless. He asks his father what he needs. His father points to some socks worn by some other patients in the room. He goes down, buys them but asks for them to be delivered to his father and then leaves.
The film, Fear of Falling (2011), is the debut feature by Polish director Bartosz Konopka, co-written by him and Piotr Konopka, starring Krzysztof Stroinski (Janiki the mentally disordered father), Marcin Doroncinski (Tomasz, the TV news anchor), Dorota Kolak (Tomasz's mother) and Madalena Poplawska ( Tomasz's wife)., is, in the words of the director, about "the fear of living, fear of
meeting challenges of everyday life" and how such "fear may be confronted and overcome". In this film there are constant flashbacks about how as a child, Tomasz accompanied his father in climbing a cold, bare, craggy mountains to reach its peak, how they had happier moments when his father would touch him on the head when he was snugly tugged in his bed at night and some happier moments when the whole family went out on an outing, how one evening, the young Tomasz found his father in a state of stupor, slumped upon a chair in front of the desk after he threw the TV upon it out of the window and how even now he would still have occasional bolts of uncontrollable rage in which he throws everything in sight about and how when he was poor, he had to save enough money to buy a decent overcoat before daring to going into a local electronic store to select his first TV set, how after learning about it , Tomasz immediately brings his father to the same shop and buys him the latest flat screen TV.
Shortly after the third scene,Tomasz tries to sell the flat where his father had been living since his childhood so that his father may exchange it for a better flat but when he brings a lady real estate agent in to do an appraisal, we see how his father flew into another rampage. Tomasz felt bad about doing so without first consulting his father and thereafter, despite his busy schedule, he would pay him a weekly visit either at his father's house or at the mental hospital .
His girl friend took Tomasz to see his parents after the pregnancy shortly after his promotion to be the news anchor at the 6 p.m. news
instead of being a roving reporter but in the middle of the meal at their house, he leaves because he could not stand it any longer. He was probably thinking of his father. Eventually he couldn't take the strain of having to work and to look after his father at the same time and just stared blankly in front of the TV camera during one of the nightly new casts and resigned. He took his father to the mountains, climbed up to the peak again, where they sat quietly together to watch the snow on the mountain and the calm water of the glacial lake. Only then did his father start to talk again. But that did not last long. Soon his father reverted into his former silence. If he wanted to say something, he would simply hand in bits of paper and write on them.
Tomasz's mother just made two brief appearances in the film, once on a video phone to Tomasz to ask him how he is and the other time when she
unexpectedly dropped by to see his father, who flew into another rage.
In the conversation between mother and son, the mother said she had
enough of her husband's erratic and incomprehensible mood swings and
left because she could not take it any more. Her son did not say
anything.
In the meantime, Tomasz had moved to a new apartment and had a new baby and shortly after he had that trip to the mountain of his childhood with his father,, when his former boss came to visit him to invite him to rejoin him because he himself could now decide who to hire as Tomasz was sorely missed by his former fans on the U-tube, his father came to his new apartment, unannounced, to pay him a visit and to touch the abdomen of his wife to feel the baby but would only communicate with him with bits of paper. Life goes on. It's a moving film about the estranged human relationship in contemporary Western society, if Poland can be considered part of the West and about how if we find the story credible, even long ruptured relationships between father and son may be slowly rebuilt, though not with complete success, by one of them reaching out with perseverance, with patience and above all, with genuine and unconditional love, even if one of the parties to the relationship may be mentally disturbed.Tomasz made the effort and met the challenge. He had overcome his "fear of falling" from the heights.
The film's pace is fast, the atmosphere well captured, the acting by Stroinski and Doroncinski superb and the spare music used effectively. I have no complaints except that perhaps the director could have dwelt a little more on what caused Tomasz.'s father to go into his psychotic state in the first place.
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