Iirc in falling down he got fired like at least a few weeks earlier and just kept driving the commute to keep up apperances.
I think that is correct.
At the time, the movie was a kind of violent Curb Your Enthusiasm, people sort of identified with the trivial frustrations that the main character was dealiing with (traffic, etc.) but with 30 years of hindsight the movie does play into contemporary white male greivance narratives. There’s no evidence that the main character’s failings (unemployment, marriage breakdown) are anyone’s fault but his own, yet the film centered on his perspective invites us to imagine that his failed marriage is his wife’s fault, his unemployment is a faceless corporation’s fault, etc., etc. These ideas would be right at home (alt-right at home?) in the 2024 toxic masculinity derposphere.
Yeah the nostalgia for Falling Down, and the reaction to it at the time, is more about the idea of the movie than the movie itself.
It just hits a nerve of that day we’ve all had where nothing is going right in your personal life, traffic sucks, the boss is being an asshole and the job is generally dehumanizing, etc. You’re trying to hold it together but a big part of you just wants to get out a shotgun and go on a rampage. You wind up losing it over some seemingly trivial thing like wanting breakfast at 10:45.
It’s like The Scream for Gen-X.
I’m not sure who got the better end of the deal here.
Pink and orange ftw