
The calendar was already pushing towards the end of the year, and it seemed that a sleeper such as this would never be seen by my eyes it pains me to say, but I had missed the chance to see such a flick months back on the big screen. On my Year’s End list, “The Fall” had come in at number three on my list of favorites of ‘08, behind only “Be Kind Rewind” by Michel Gondry and “Let the Right One In” by Tomas Alfredson, which was quite a surprise.
Unlike some movies I completely idolized while I was young only to change my perspective years after, “The Fall” becomes a great movie with every single view.
This brings me to my childhood when I was in college, and how apparently Gilliam’s “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” (1989) held me spellbound. What was the current situation? I just knew that the film was utterly underappreciated and out of reach of the mainstream audience, and, like so many other films at the time, it was considered “odd” and received very mixed reviews.
Well, apparently Gilliam’s magnum opus has found its companion in Tarsem’s film who, depending on your opinion of him, either validated his brilliance following the equally divisive but much more commercially successful “The Cell” (2000) or left you cold to his flamboyant works entirely.
The glorious “The Fall”, which had been out of print for a long period of time, will be back in theaters towards the end of September and is also on the difficult-to-access streaming platform in Mubi, so hurry up.
Los Angeles, 1915. The first scene shows a black-and-white clip in slow motion showing what appears to be an accident. They see a stunt that went too far and injured the stunt pilot Rick (Lee Pace) who needs hospitalization. Rick languishes about in death beds regretting losing the love of a movie actress whom he uses to adore (she’s taken by the main actor) and is also injured a lot.
While recovering Roy finds a new strange friend in the 5-year-old actress Alexandria in which Catinca Untaru has only made this as her sole film. At first, he tests her nerves, but later on very quickly becomes his audience, because Roy invites her to join him in a symposium of how he colored his life with great events he tells her everything will be epic and doesn’t disappoint her.
The antagonists are beautifully portrayed in Roy’s skewed universe and are delivered with cinematic wonder as if a David Lean epic. Roy further moves on with cultural references boasting of Alexander the Great and imagery drenched in wondrous details portraying Roy as a utopian rogue seeking and battling the villain Odious.
Those great tales of Roy convey feelings to the young Alexandria cementing bonds of affection between them and spirits of both Roy’s the “normal” and the “fictional” reside in the feeble confidence to “carry on.”
Similar to ‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen’ or ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (1939) to mention a few, the actors are in different versions of one or several characters playing both the “real” and the “fiction” parts. The title is somewhat self-explanatory, but again it is about the fall and the effort that is required after Roy musters all his strength and determination to rise after falling from quite a height.
How to visually find words for a moving image? Do you remember the fairy tales when you were young and the best pictures were drawn on its pages? Every single shot is like this here.
His camera work for Colin Watkinson cinematographer includes episodes from series such as ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ which is hosted by Hulu and captures the most eye-catching images. If the image of Alexander the Great sitting in the middle of the wasteland does not excite you, wait for the next one where an elephant swims in clear blue water.
We could say that another interesting moment the close-up of the “stony-faced priest”, which further dissolves into a wide shot of an arid landscape is just one more such moment in the movie which has several. There’s an intense sequence where stop-motion animation is presented in order to show the child’s feelings during the medical treatment (which also allows a type of animation to create a scene that would be impossible to do in real life).
This is apparent in the picture where we see an upside-down horse silhouette on a wall, this element brings back memories of how a film is made and put together, by the use of a projector light which fakes movement and audience attention.
Graphically set in the time when the cinema was still dubbed as “flicks” or moving pictures, “The Fall” is soulful and heartfelt and tells us how motion pictures capture and elicit emotions in people. Since Roy was a cinema stuntman, he was in a way, part of some legendary formation.
In as much as it was being “presented” by Spike Jonze and David Fincher, the film had no other star recognition so Tarsem relied heavily on his two leads to bring the movie to life, a huge ask of untested actors at that time (Pace had not featured in “Pushing Daisies” during this period) but ‘great faith in my performers, as it turned out, was justified’.
It is interesting how there is a severe imbalance in the character development of Roy’s sister Alexandria, played by Untaru, who appears in numerous scenes and endows the character with many cute idiosyncrasies and also nuances, and Roy, whose character is largely undeveloped in the screenplay. There’s an endearing chemistry between Roy and Alexandria that makes it seem as though they really are siblings in real life too, encompassing the essence of their characters.
Fortunately, the film does not take itself too seriously and manages to joke about its over-the-top moments (the instances when Alexandria comments on the narrations of her brother bring despicable humor to the surreal imagery and bleak narrative at hand).
Interestingly, Tarsem made a point about big tales being told around creativity tension in a storyline, as we briefly hear a doctor talking to Roy about a different patient saying, “One bite? Maybe, but a pit of snakes?” Most likely, a fiction as well as an overall drama, exists in this hospital.
The first time I watched this movie and it finished, I remember vividly asking, why aren’t there more movies like this? One can either hide in a corner, cursing the stupidity and absurdity of it all (which some reviewers of this film have done), or fall in love with the mesmerizing visuals along with the story and characters knowing how much energy and love Tarsem pours into each shot. The choice is yours.
I appreciate Tarsem’s overgrown love letter to the art of narration and can confirm that it improves with every viewing.
Tarsem Singh intended ‘The Fall’, which has disappointed its fans over the past four years and was shot in 24 countries, Turk had a budget of $30 million. In fact, however, it seems that the final product, costing well over four times that amount, was achieved.
Tarsem’s later works, such as ‘Immortals’ (2011), ‘Mirror, Mirror’ (2012), and ‘Self/Less’ (2015), all of which are visually impressive, are minor works. I wonder if Tarsem will make a deeply personal film with such guts again.
Or, like the ones Roy writes for Alexandria, perhaps for Tarsem ‘The Fall’ was such a joy to create that it will be extremely difficult to replicate.
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