The Fall (2019) dir. Jonathan Glazer

In anticipation of the premiere of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest — a period drama set in Nazi Germany at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, we’re thrilled to present his surreal short about mob mentality The Fall. Despite his fitful filmography, Glazer has proven himself as one of the most intriguing and innovative filmmakers working today, with a trifecta of spellbinding features — Sexy Beast, Birth, Under the Skin — and a series of provocative short-form works. Since the release of Under the Skin in 2013, a rumination on loneliness starring Scarlett Johansson as a seductive Scottish alien, Glazer has extemporaneously released two short films about the horrors of group-thinking. The first of these, The Fall, envisions a frenzied crowd and their decision to lynch a community outlier by throwing him down a well of seemingly infinite depth. In counterpoint to Oscar-nominated composer Mica Levi’s pounding score, the crowd operates in silence and disguises themselves behind masks featuring exaggerated grimaces, a nod to both Spanish painter Francisco Goya’s macabre prints about life during wartime and a photo of Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr smiling as they pose with a dead leopard in their arms. “I think fear is ever-present. And that drives people to irrational behaviour. A mob encourages an abdication of personal responsibility. The rise of National Socialism in Germany for instance was like a fever that took hold of people. We can see that happening again.” JONATHAN GLAZER Glazer has long concerned himself with the status of the outcast, whether it be in the form of self-retired safe-crackers, widowing wives, or literal aliens. It is only up until recently that he’s shifted his attention to those intent on ostracizing them. The Fall can be taken as a sign of things to come for his upcoming film about complicity during the Holocaust, as Glazer has become involved in a process of questioning how ordinary people can “stand by,” or become “complicit,” in the exclusion of the few by the many.