B N 'Before The Fall' manages to pack a handfl of genuinely beautiful scenes into its 1 hr 32 min running time. It also manages to fill the rest of the scenes with a lot of uninspired writing, clumsy directing, and some regretably bad acting.Before I continue, I would like to single out three of the lead actors as having been quite good.Chase Connor as the deeply troubled and brooding Darcy is very good. There is something about this character (in keeping with the original novel) that demands he be as handsome as he is conflicted, and Mr Conner does not disappoint. He is (as another reviewer has rightly noted) "breathtaking" to look at. While he does get in a fair bit of brooding, it is not the only note that he strikes. We see him smile (a couple times) with his new-found friend Bingley (played equally well by the devastatingly handsome Jason Mac), we see him pensive and in pain, seemingly on the verge of tears. We see him struggle and want to open up, grasping at hope. He makes us see it, this hope, like a distant glimmer that he spies but cannot reach. He is a man with many demons, and Conner captures it well.Ethan Sharrett contributes a well-balanced performance on the whole. There are some beautiful moments when he ceases to "act" and just inhabits the character of Bennett so completely that we are transported, we are there with him, in his pain and his embarassment and his regret. But at other times, perhaps due to the sodden script or the uneven directing, his acting seems to flounder, he loses both likeability and believability.This brings us to the script: it is in bad need of a re-write. I understand that Mr Geisling (who wrote the script and directed the film) was trying to break new ground with this effort, but I think it is clear that the script suffers from his narrow perspective.We are not supposed to despise any of the character's from Jane Austen's novel, so I am confused about why Mr Geisling would choose to make Bennett so thoroughly unlikeable through much of the film. Yes, he is supposed to be classist and snobby (Geisling switches the character's roles, making Darcy from the working class and Bennett from the upper class) and flawed and short-sighted. But we are always supposed to retain the idea that his superior attitude is not his true self, that he is mostly a victim of his upbringing. Once he is faced with seeing his ugly self in the proverbial mirror, he will not like what he sees and he'll quietly set about changing. Mr Bennett's evolution comes about too quickly for me right at the end of the film.Bennett's gay friends are downright insufferable with their catty obsession with men that they want to pursue.Cathy (Darcy's girlfriend) is a ... well, she's so many bad words that I cannot write them here. Suffice it to say that the first rhymes with "hunt" and the second with "ditch". How or why Darcy is with her is truly a mystery. Her bigotry and vitriol seem overdone. There is no nuance in her character, either in the script or in the actor's portrayal.Yes, such terrible people exist in the world, but such an unrelenting lack of sympathetic qualities sours a film.I recently watched the Irish film 'The Stag' (also titled 'The Bachelor Weekend') which featured the character known as The Machine. He is the slightly psychopathic and very inappropriate soon-to-be brother-in-law of the groom, and he has managed to wedge himself into a bachelor weekend (an ersatz stag experience) much to the chagrin of the groom, the best man, and their three mates. But as initially brash, uncouth, and yes, even slightly psycho as he is, he actually turns out to be a good listener and a staunch ally and teaches these men a few lessons about what it means to be a loyal friend.

jm10701 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.

shaffinmerx Pride is one thing. Then there is serendipity. "Before the Fall" popped up on my Amazon Recommended queue last week, and my first thought was not kind based on the cover art."Before the Fall" is so much more - a movie on the nature of moral sentiments. For those who think "Before the Fall" is about a romance or two, I have news - it's equally about goodness. This is deeply humanistic film. If "Before the Fall" has the hots for anything, it is kindness. This is a movie about desire and manners, but which play out as something larger, with Ben Bennett (Ethan Sharrett) as the movie's exemplar. It has a lot of Ben in itself, which is why I wish some things had been framed differently. The review version I posted at Amazon, under Orton Redux, includes a start-to-finish Fan Edit (same review title: "Praise, and a Fan Edit The Morning After").From the credits, I gather that this production is very much a collective effort. In which case, let's praise everyone, starting with director Byrum Geisler. The filmmakers have created a distinctive world worth visiting more than once. Supported every step of the way by Adi Goldstein's stellar score, and Brandon Garza's expansive cinematography, the mise-en-scene achieves something extraordinary: a narrative that is consistently, pleasurably immersive. The movie's awareness extends to its class consciousness - as the two romances inspired by "Pride and Prejudice" unfold, a widening social milieu opens. Unexpected is what is not said from in scenes short and long: desire mingles with human flaws, injustice with justice, and poverty with outreach emotional and otherwise. "Before the Fall" achieves a memorably resonant interplay of flawed, beautiful characters who are more often than not (to steal a page from "Before the Fall") also good people.Two star-making performances enrich "Before the Fall". One needs more structural support from the filmmakers, and I've gone into this in the Fan Edit at Amazon. Then there is Ethan Sharrett's performance as Ben. No matter where he is in the frame, Sharrett anchors the movie. He is right up there in my estimation with the score, direction and cinematography. When I looked up his other roles, I was astonished how the "Paradox Alice" physicality had morphed into Ben - the gait, the cadence, and a confidence that far rom stealing scenes, does something generous: it enriches the entire ensemble. Sexuality is never the issue with Ben: doing the right thing is. A lot of boy scout rises up in Ben, and damned if every expression of it doesn't work gangbusters. A pleasurable example is the half-beat pause around Lee (Chase Conner) as Ben's smile and the breath falter mid-expression, this from a character who is otherwise well-suited and together. If one can ever will into being the movies in one's head - a long-overdue remake of "The Conformist" with the American surveillance state as the backdrop, or an American take on Karim Aïnouz's "Futuro Beach", or a fun revisit with a new "The Last of Sheila" - here is my one and only submission for the A-list.If we're projecting, then a message for everyone involved: that your collective investment in these characters not be let go too easily. Ben, Lee, Jane Gardiner (Brandi Price) and Chuck Bingley (Jason Mac) are immensely attractive characters for all the right reasons. Set in southwest Virginia, "Before the Fall" already proffers narratives beyond the main stories here. Before the movie has ended, we take in poverty, nature conservation, the law (including an assistant prosecutor you want to see again), unseen "political buddies", and I can't be the only one who thinks that George Wickham (Jonathan Horvath) wants revenge, rather like Darth Vader at the end of Star Wars Episode IV. A sequel or limited series would let the core quintet loose, now that the groundwork has been laid. This, too, would be faithful to the historic response to "Pride and Prejudice", which has spun myriad, and often disparate, sequels.The core of "Before the Fall" - a solid hour - is a state of grace. Perplexing are the ways in which the filmmakers don't fully anchor what they've got with Lee and Ben. If the camera can go DePalma (close) - twice - on a heterosexual kiss, then the least the film syntax can do is give back more to Ben and Lee. By this, I mean more than the length and nature of a same-sex kiss, when it arrives. The movie would benefit greatly by loosening its grip on Lee. This would release more agency in Lee via Chase Conner's characterization. Conner gets emotionally powerful scenes, yet the movie lets him down more than once, by not cutting at the right moment, by leaving in an extraneous line of dialogue, by dissipating a shot's impact by playing it too long.Our focus is compromised from the start, in the way the film sets itself up, then intercuts between Lee and Ben, then throws in a dissolve flashback. The opening scene doesn't do the work it's supposed to: and we are left with a clunky flashback structure quickly forgotten. As the movie stands, we are also left with the distinct sense that Ben is doing the heavy lifting. Greater attractions exists between Lee and an anonymous pick-up (take it as a pun), and especially between Lee and Chuck. The way around these competing relationships is not to reduce their screen time, but to achieve greater emphasis elsewhere: accentuate what is already there - a deeper pain in Lee and a stronger evolving interest in Ben.Within the confines of the film, and assuming no other footage, such an alternate structure exists. See the Fan Edit at Amazon, based on Amazon time signatures. Since my intention was only to build with what I saw, I take nothing away from the filmmakers behind and in front of the camera, and what they accomplished, which is why the review there is, and will remain, 5-stars.

timofbooks This was wonderful. The acting was great, the scenery was superb, the story was fab. A nice slow-burn love story, with real character development throughout. A real gem with a HEA.I think the casting choices were absolutely spot on, you could get lost in Lee's deep tortured eyes for days!