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The Fall

I hadn't heard anything about The Fall until a few months ago when a design blog featured its trailer on their site. It had been released in a few theaters scattered across the country but none anywhere near where I was at the time. The trailer was intriguing, none-the-less, and I remembered enjoying Tarsem Singh's last directorial endeavor, The Cell, if for nothing more than stunning, and creepy, imagery alone. Thankfully, he left J.Lo out of this one and since I'm a sucker for pretty movies and for scenes that show without telling (ie: the goldfish/shooting scene from City of God) I sought it out.

The Fall takes place in Charles Bukowski's Los Angeles -- where xenophobic Americans of the Great Depression got their kicks hate-criming immigrant farmers -- in a hospital where the two ends of the city's social spectrum meet. Alexandria, a 5 or 6 year-old Romanian orange farmer is nursing a broken arm, the English language, and the memories of the tragic rape of her father's grove. Roy, a silver screen stunt man, has lost feeling in his legs, and his girlfriend, due to an ill-planned movie stunt. The two meet amidst an array of hospital characters that weave themselves into the other story being told at the same time, which appears to be Tarsem's favorite part of the movie.

The other story being told is a romantic tale of 5 (or 6?) warriors united in their vengeance for a General Odious. The 5 (or 6?) characters in the nightmarish fantasy are an ex-slave, an Indian (a humorous play on words and ethnic diversity in the U.S.), an Italian explosives expert, a Spanish (or French?) bandit, a mystic (who appears when it's convenient for him to portray something dark and dramatic despite the fact that he's already been written out of the story), and Charles Darwin, lover of animals, in a pretty fantastic coat. Roy and Alexandria use each other, one for drugs and one for escapism, through Roy's bandit tale.

Tarsem (he likes it when you leave out his last name, which reminds me of Tarkan, the Turkish pop star) makes his dollars doing this (this and this) and had to film The Fall in between commercials. The list of filming locations for the movie is nothing short of spectacular (India, Indonesia, Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, South Africa, Prague, Chile, China, Egypt, Fiji, Nepal, Maldives, Namibia, France, Romania, and Turkey) and creates a jigsaw puzzle of a world that is everything and nothing like our own. Unfortunately for Tarsem, even the most skilled of film editors can't erase the smog from the scenes in Udaipur's floating palace. The rest of the film has no trouble marketing epic scenes of a pre-globalized world to the audience as majestic horses (Tarsem's favorite animal?) gallop down mountains of orange sand and as an evil priest's face melts into snowy mountaintop.

The movie is great about not taking itself so seriously by giving leeway to Alexandria's (Catinca Untaru) fumbling language skills and by frequently changing the themes and plots of the other story. Some parts are laughable and it's nice to see the characters laughing along with you. Though some scenes do play like they were only meant to be grand ideas that get lost in the length of an actual scene, the movie as a whole presents some of the most stunning visuals I've seen since, well, The Cell. Unlike other visionary directors who just can't seem to make their plots hold up to their images, Tarsem uses the humor of The Fall to make his extravagant scenes that much more unbelievable. My favorite parts though, are Alexandria's nightmare and the warrior's escape from the island.

Also, this behind-the-scenes footage (around the 1 minute mark) of Tarsem screaming "ONCE AGAIN!" and clawing his face in frustration as the actors struggle to create a drowning scene is both frightening and telling. It's clear that this was a painstaking story to tell and the director's love affair with beautiful cinema comes through. He wasn't making this movie for Levi's or Sprite, for once he wasn't creating anything for anyone but himself.

For clips of the movie go
here ... the New York Times, by the way, had nothing nice to say about this movie (SURPRISE!) calling it "strictly bargain bin" but if you can't turn off the snob switch for 117 minutes and just watch a pretty movie then you won't like this one.

and here

posted by Bagel @ 6:51 AM