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The Fall

Over the course of the last two decades, Tarsem Singh (a commercial and music video director responsible for the critically panned but visually arresting 'The Cell') has been diligently working to develop and finish 'The Fall,' a career-long labor of love that finally debuted at the Toronto Film Festival in 2006 and earned a limited theatrical release in 2008. Shot over a period of four years in a nation-hopping trek across the globe, financed largely on his own dime, and bursting with the same surreal imagery he brings to all his projects, 'The Fall' arrives on home video with a lot of baggage. Does Tarsem's second film suffer from the same problems as his first? Is it just an overblown music video? Does it have any substance?

'The Fall' follows a 1920s stuntman named Roy (Lee Pace) who's crippled when a dangerous leap from a bridge ends in tragedy. Bedridden and depressed in a Los Angeles hospital, Roy meets a young girl named Alexandria (the precocious and exceptionally natural Catinca Untaru) and begins to tell her an elaborate tale of six heroes -- a lovelorn Indian warrior (Jeetu Verma), an ex-slave (Marcus Wesley), an explosives expert (Robin Smith), the infamous Charles Darwin (Leo Bill), an otherworldly mystic (Julian Bleach), and a mysterious, masked bandit (initially Emil Hostina and eventually Pace himself) -- who join forces to take revenge on their sworn enemy, the evil Governor Odious (Daniel Caltagirone). As Roy's story unfolds, Alexandria's imagination takes center stage, erasing the fine line between the harsh realities of the world and the naive visions of her mind's eye. Yet even as he grows to genuinely care for the girl, Roy has an ulterior motive: tricking Alexandria into stealing a bottle of morphine tablets that he wants to use to kill himself.

Let's be honest: most everyone who steps up to defend Tarsem's 'The Cell' is forced to point to its evocative imagery while settling for a contrived plot and shallow characters. I would know, I happen to be one of those tepid pseudo-fans. However, to my relief, I haven't felt the need to justify or apologize for any shortcomings in 'The Fall' simply because I didn't encounter any. The director's second film is surprisingly sweet and unexpectedly charming -- a painterly vision that snaps back and forth between a dusty reality and a vivid dreamscape just as Terry Gilliam did in 'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen' and Guillermo del Toro did in 'Pan's Labyrinth.' His fairy tale still features bleak and disturbing visuals, as well as abstract symbology and recurring images, but his cast brings such warmth and compassion to their parts that they elevate the entire script. Pace and Untaru are phenomenal, co-anchoring the dual natures of both their realities and providing a compelling commentary on innocence and desperation. I don't know where Tarsem found the young actress in particular, but her naturalistic mannerisms and line readings are so disarmingly endearing that I shared the smiles and tears that graced her face.

I've dug through the general problems critics had with 'The Fall' and, frankly, most of their comments seem to have been primed to launch before they even watched the film. It's tough to argue that Tarsem's surreal visualizations are hollow and pretentious when the story of Roy and Alexandria is so personal, complex, and down-to-earth. It's even more difficult to claim that the film is incoherent or plodding since its plot is so richly developed and its tone so lyrical and precise. Granted, 'The Fall' is the sort of artistic experience that will always have its critics and I'll be the first to admit that this isn't a film for everyone. It's methodical pacing and the alterations of its time stream are quite reminiscent of '300' (which has its own share of irritable hecklers), it's underlying plot contains a fully-developed homage and various nods to silent era Hollywood, and the filmmakers blend a variety of practical, digital, and artistic special effects (including a bit of deft stop motion animation and several extremely intricate miniatures). Even so, this is art as film folks. Just because it includes surrealism and inventive uses of familiar techniques doesn't make it pretentious -- it just makes it bold and extraordinary....

Kenneth Brown
High-Def Digest
(09.10.08)

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