University lecturer Jack Stanway is haunted by the ghost of his dead wife Marion. A series of illicit affairs with student girls have managed to estrange Marion, who in a fit of loneliness has killed herself. Even following her death Jack has continued to shag his way across campus, extending his personal harem. His persistent and wayward sexual behaviour has invoked Marion’s revenge from beyond the grave and she torments him here and there, now and then. Marion eventually provokes Jack’s guilt and he descends into alcoholism and begins to fall apart. The film picks up the story with Jack’s last drunken day as a lecturer and a day that will end in tragedy.

 

 

To my wife’s and employers' relief this tale is not based on my own experience as a university lecturer. Nor is it based on anyone I know. The depicted events are merely a conglomeration of extended fantasies and the dark satisfaction of projecting a worst case scenario for termination of employment. Just another example of manhood gone awry. Jack Stanway’s multiple affairs aren’t actually illegal. Granting special academic dispensation for sexual liaisons IS, as far as university regulations are concerned, where I work. Without the constituent moral and ethical components that are the bed rock of responsible professional behaviour, the full effect of Jack’s nature is enabled and unrestrained. However, he may be having his wicked way with the girls, but ultimately he is being played for a fool and doomed to tragic failure, as a husband and as a man. His sheer will and sexual drive is enough to stall anything resembling guilt. Clearly his marriage and the emotional well being of his wife have been overwritten by his unrelenting rut.

 

There is something self-destructive that lies at the heart of Jack. He’d rather burn in the moment than fade away. This is a desperate circumstance that betrays a crisis synonymous with a natural effeteness common to the onset of middle age. A perceived loss of life essence visits us all sooner or later. Some deal with it and some don’t fair so well. Distractions need to be implemented to offset the misery of relentless aging and to affirm the integrity of manly potency, with its attendant vanity and ego. May be making this film is my way of dealing with it. In an abstract and projected way I engage my own desires by proxy, using the characters in the film. I’m hoping that doesn’t make me sound like a total pervert.

 

Within the context of the world of film, this narrative is unremarkable. It trades heavily on stereotypes and thematic solutions already established in mature minds. That is to say that this film will be familiar to people with an authentically acquired wisdom through actual life experience. There isn’t enough film time to submerge the viewer.

 

This film will have some common ground with women. Although they don’t need reminding of how fallible men are. I suspect this is why Laurel & Hardy aren’t popular with women. They will of course identify to some extent with Marion’s predicament. She is a victim of Jack’s illicit way of life. She has been denied children and a emotionally stable and loving married life through Jack’s lack of interest in her. She has been deserted. She uses this against Jack. The fact that her misery hasn’t been remedied by secret assignations of her own, is testament to her own moral integrity and the principal quality that upholds the good in her.

 

The mechanism by which Marion is able to revisit Jack is never made apparent in the film. It’s actually irrelevant. Marion’s relative purity compared to Jack’s immoral abuse of his authority is may be enough to muster suitable supernatural forces to effect the transition. By what authority this power is granted is even more unimportant. An automatic natural apparatus is more reliable than indoctrinated religious dogma.

 

The tragic ending to Falling for Jack has been compared with the narrative resolutions from Tales of the Unexpected and similar dramatic vehicles attempting a shock tactic. It may translate as being mundane and commonplace but seemed a suitable pinnacle given the rhythm, the duration of the film and direction of ascending events.

 

The film ends on the roof of a tall building. Jack has climbed a mountain in search of wisdom or an alternate view point that will some how illuminate his life, his predicament, although his actions trade as a suicide attempt. Instead of redemption or a helping hand Sally’s overriding ambition persists to the end, with a request that further amplifies her cold nature. At the point where she eventually offers something approaching real sympathy, Marion intercedes with devastating effect. Marion reclaims her ‘man’ and very much on her own terms. Marion becomes re-empowered. Checkmate.

 

 

© Nick Daniel 2006