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Bookmark this pageThe Fall (2006)
Director: Tarsem
Movie review
From Time Out London
Commercials director Tarsem Singh poured millions into this striking fantasia, shot in 18 countries, then self-distributed in the US (‘presented’ by David Fincher and Spike Jonze). It’s a unique undertaking, for good and ill.It’s 1915, and a movie stuntman (Lee Pace, anonymous) languishes in an LA hospital, where he unspools tall tales to a little girl (Catinca Untaru, captivatingly unaffected) from another ward, who shares with us the images they conjure up in her mind’s eye – huge vistas, storybook heroism and colours so vivid we might have dreamed them. Profiting from jaw-dropping Indian locations, the film dazzles like few others, and its commitment to the wonders of the real world is refreshing. Yet once we’ve been dazzled, that’s it. The pacing drags and the clichéd tussle between childhood innocence and adult disillusionment can only go one way. Better to experience it than think about it, fair to say.
Author: Trevor Johnston
Time Out London Issue 1989: October 2 - 8
User reviews of this film
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- Liz said...
- Posted on Dec 22 2008 15:44 The young actress is so believable with the expressions captured in her eyes and from the slight movements of her mouth. I was mesmerised by her. The scenery is stunning and fantastical. And this was my impression from watching it in economy class on the plane!
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- Lee said...
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Posted on Oct 26 2008 11:49
If you like my photography, you will love this film - the picture composition is stunning, the choice of locations is breathtaking (24 different countries - taking 4 years to film), and waiting for the right time of the day to shoot.
There are brown men against blue backgrounds (stunning), scarlet expanses displayed in deserts of brilliant white sand, perspectives with good photographic lines and splashes of colour.
The plot is just wow - two people, both with needs. The man telling the story in words, the girl imagining it in her mind. Yet the man will try and move the story to one of disaster because his life has come to that end, while the girl will pull it into hope even though her father is dead and she sees in him both a lover (girlie crush) and a father.
The cuts between real life and fantasy show you how the girl is putting herself in the film into different characters and putting him in there also - so the story becomes a conflict between two desperate lives fighting for control of the ending.
Who will win? Will the man's hopelessness destroy the hope of the girl? Or will he bow down to the girl's urging that he brings life back to his own life and saves the story
from hopelessness?
And what of the eucharist she gives him? Is she really saving his soul as he jokes by her refusal to let him self-destruct?
This is a most stunningly perfect film. - Report as inappropriate
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- big dave said...
- Posted on Oct 05 2008 17:27 Worth investing the time to simply sit, relax and nourish your eyes. I've seen lots of criticism of the plot (or lack of), but to me that was almost the point of this film. Improvisation, unusual narrative paths, taking in delight in small details and grand camerawork alike. It has done something so vital that so many Hollywood productions miss, I left the cinema feeling refreshed and exhilarated. But maybe that's just me?
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- Luci said...
- Posted on Oct 03 2008 02:58 This was beautiful and unusual. It wanders into the strange meshed imagination of two invalids - a suicidal man and a 5 year old girl in plaster cast- as they step into a shifting, skewiff tale of colourful bandits and dark warriors. Split between bright, sweeping lands, peppered with mythical looking buildings, and the intimate confines of a dimly lit hospital room, the film flits between darkness and whimsy. There are some delightful scenes of miscommunication, and the girl is wonderfully believable and un-Hollywood, with fearless broken English and missing teeth. She potters about, peeking into adult scenes of darkness and death, and we watch her taking it all in; we see the cogs whirring. It shows the confusion and wonder of being that age, and the boundless, jumbled imagination of a young mind. I’d see it again, i recommend it
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Cast & crew
Director: Tarsem
Cast: Catinca Untaru, Lee Pace, Leo Bill, Justine Waddell full cast
Rated: 15
Duration: 116 mins
UK Release: Oct 3 2008
US Release: May 9 2008
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