The Fall | Tarsem Singh, 2008
Tarsem Singh’s The Fall is one of those filmic curiosities that come along every so often and at the same time not often enough. An elaborate project that has been years in the making, it has struggled to find investment and, subsequently, an audience to which it could be marketed to, before becoming stuck in a seemingly never-ending run of festival screenings. Since its conception almost half a decade ago, The Fall has been accused of everything from vanity to over-ambition. The prodigious talent that is Tarsem shot his latest effort piecemeal over several continents, unashamedly grabbing every grand sight that each place had to offer and thus, it feels somewhat fragmented before we even begin; before the story itself begins to fragment. Set initially in 1920’s Los Angeles, The Fall follows a curious young Indian girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) as she strikes up a relationship with bedridden stuntman Roy Walker (Lee Pace) in a lavish private hospital surrounded by shady palm trees and immaculate lawns. The pair connect immediately, and in his need for morphine to quell those sleepless nights Roy begins to tell Alexandria a tale of fantastical proportions. However, as Roy’s state worsens and his storytelling blurs the line between fantasy and reality, we begin to discover through the eyes and mind of the impressionable youngster just what drives her suicidal new companion – what exists beneath his imaginative narrating, how each of his characters relates to those in life, and why death waits at the end of all of life’s stories.
Since its belated release The Fall has provoked mixed responses from critics worldwide, mainly because people just can’t seem to pin it down. This is clearly a creation by Tarsem for Tarsem, yet if bequeathed to those with open eyes the film can appeal on many a level. First of all it is an adventure on the grandest scale, with characters as colourful and memorable as the clothes in which they’re draped. I find it difficult to imagine undertaking a project as ambitious as this one but then the director is no ordinary filmmaker. While The Fall is written by a team of experienced screenwriters, the themes on display are most definitely influenced by Tarsem’s own life experiences. In fact the ever increasing despair that clouds the film’s final act is said to be rooted in the director’s personal difficulties with life, love and family. Aside from its arresting visual prowess, the highlight of The Fall is undoubtedly its central relationship between man and girl: this important rapport is played out perfectly by Pace and the young Untaru. Apparently it took Mr. Singh more than a decade to find the right child to play the part – a character whose youthful innocence and curiosity we may all relate to without effort – and it her (and her character’s) fumbling of the English language that so aptly reflects Roy’s 0wn difficulty with love. The Fall suffers on occasion from trying to do too much, drawing heavily from the imagination of others and thus often losing the thread of its own story. Yet most of these flaws can be easily overlooked for The Fall is indeed escapism in its purest sense.
Our Rating:
