Film Review:
The Fall
by Susan Michals
Back in the 80’s and 90’s we had midnight screenings at places like the Exploratorium in San Francisco of Pink Floyd’s The Wall for over-the-top, hallucinogenic imagery. Now award-winning director Tarsem Singh creates the newly-minted successor with his visual masterpiece, The Fall.
Here is a film that has no big names – no J-LO or Vince Vaughn like his last movie, The Cell – no, just a five-year-old girl from Romania (Catinca Untaru) and the man who spends the majority of his screen time with her, Pushing Daisies’ Lee Pace. The film was shot on virtually every continent on earth – 38 different locations, and took over four years to complete. The film opens in a Los Angeles hospital circa 1915. Roy (Pace) is a movie star who is unable to walk after a stunt has gone wrong. He is suicidal and despondent, and sees an opportunity when fellow patient Alexandria (Untaru) gloms onto him for his storytelling prowess in exchange for getting him goodies from the dispensary (morphine). The sumptuous fantasy world filled with good guys and a lot of bad ones (that he conjures up) mixes patients and hospital staff with new personae. Alexandria is so riveted, she will do whatever Roy wants.
But as the story begins to get darker and darker – akin to Roy’s spiraling despair – the young girl realizes there’s more at stake than just this netherworld of fantasy, and who knows whether the Black Bandit (the character that Pace also plays) or even Roy himself – will survive.
Pace does a phenomenal job of carrying the film, but only because he was paired with such an unusual leading lady in Untaru. Their interaction is seamless. Pace recently said in a previous interview (h Magazine, March) that much of the conversations with the young girl were actually, improvised.
But the film itself is divided between fantasy and reality – and that is only half of what makes The Fall. It reminds one of Girl with a Pearl Earring. Not stylistically, but in the way that as you watch scene after scene, it is like watching a moving painting that goes from one masterful shot to the next. Some of the scenes are so arresting, they literally will cause you to gasp at the sheer beauty of what is playing before you. And no, this is not a CGI 300 cornucopia of images – these are real locations. The film has been a true labor of love for the director, as scouting for the film took him over a decade with a four-year shoot. Furthermore, Tarsem not only directed this film, he wrote it (with Dan Gilroy and Nico Soultanakis), edited it, and completely financed the movie himself.
Despite all this, The Fall will not be a big blockbuster; at its core, it is an art film, through and through. It’s the type of film that should be playing as an installation at The Met or the Louvre, amidst the other incredible classic masterpieces, where it belongs.
about h:
About h Magazine
Advertising
Feedback