The Fall (2008) Movie Review

“The Fall” is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, one that is not without its flaws. What is amazing is that it uses no computer effects and completely supersedes any big budget epic made of nothing but computer effects, and no substance. What we have here is art, beautiful, calculated, constructed through know-how, imagination, resources, and so many new images that Werner Herzog, who says we are starved for such things, might tell its director, Tarsem, to tone it down a bit. But the style brings another director to mind. If you are familiar with the work of Alejandro Jodorowski, I need not say more. Tarsem follows in the footsteps of this great director by creating images seemingly out of thin air, surroundings, and most importantly craft. Not to detract from the craft involved in CGI, but by craft I mean actually manipulating physical matter to create artifice. Like Jodorowski, there are huge sets, that according to Tarsem, were many times actual locations where he was owed favors. There are large desert landscapes and giant palaces that defy descriptions, with colors vivid, reflecting a visual rainbow, but not overly saturated, as each color compliments another.

The production design, if one may call it that (considering that much of the locations were many places which Tarsem filmed previously when filming commercials and music videos), is ungodly. I say ungodly, because calling it godly would perhaps limit one’s understanding of its grandeur to a human conception of a deity. But it seems limitless, unbound by any financial restriction, and completely, admittedly indulgent in every sense of the word and then some. This has prompted some to call it “artistic nonsense.” If by “artistic nonsense” they mean the director’s vision splashed on the screen in front of our eyes, perhaps so much so that it makes less sense to our eyes, then I was, and am ready and willing for it to be flayed upon me, for the very reason it makes less sense to me than the director. Nature and brilliant architecture collide, providing a collage of different art styles, most notable surrealist qualities such as those of Dali, including the burial of the many friends of the bandit, with a burial sheet turned red by blood, the infinite staircase, the birth from a burning tree, and the death of a man by arrows, who falls on then, suspending him in the air until death.

That being said, my affinity for the genius of this film extends mostly towards the visual, less the story, which is good, and still less the cohesion of the film, which is not as good. This was my problem with Tarsem’s other feature length film, The Cell. The Cell was a magnificently unconventional version of a detective story, in which a psychologist enters the mind of a serial killer. But its story was decent at best, and did not match the visuals within the mind of the killer that represented, like its 2006 successor, a barrage of different art styles from different time periods, thrown together into one massive piece. I have related to friends that I would rather watch the film on mute, taking in its visuals as though it were an art projection in a museum. The Fall is a vast improvement, touching many different moods, and evoking them humorously, sadly, comedically, tragically, in manners grandiose and subtle.

The story has a charm to it that was lacking in the Cell (although charm in the Cell certainly would not have worked). A silent film actor, Roy Walker, played by Lee Pace has injured himself, perhaps permanently, on the set of a film he was working on in order to impress his former girlfriend, and simultaneously commit suicide. In this LA hospital, he meets a little broken armed girl named Alexandria, who immediately begins to ask him questions over and over again until she receives answers. She is played by Cantinca Untaru, who in real life speaks little English, and therefore the illusion that she is a Romanian immigrant child who consistently mishears Roy, is not an illusion at all, much like the film’s amazing visuals. Once enraptured by her presence, he first begins to tell her a story about Alexander the Great, but she intervenes, calling one of the story elements “stupid.” This becomes a continuing device in the film, when the film’s actual story takes place, so much so that Alexandria becomes completely part of the story. When Alexandria continues to do favors for Roy, like getting him morphine pills, he begins to invent a story involving no less than an escaped slave, a demolitions expert, an Indian prince, a famous bandit, a spirit guide, and the English naturalist, Charles Darwin. It seems curious that these figures would be paired together in this man’s story, but considering its 1920’s time period, Roy’s consciousness is actually reflected well in these characters. They all hate the Governor Odious, who has banished them and done them all hideous wrongs. And the story, then much in the vein of Pan’s Labyrinth, begins to mirror the actual life of Roy.

The jumps in the story as narrated by Roy, who has severe emotional problems creates the strength of the film, that also holds its biggest weakness.

The strength of the film is that the narrative can mold to whatever the speaker says, and metafictionally makes sense of the most pristine crystal clarity, not to mention that every brilliant image he conjures can change in an instant, giving rise to the wide variety of astounding images. The weakness, though is just as prevalent. It stops short in places that do work for its premise, for example. Because the story can shift and does depending on the mood of Roy, the tone of the film, its mood, widens and then narrows in scope depending on his state of mind so rapidly that it almost becomes summary rather than story. When he is reciting the story for the benefit of Alexandira, it appears the story broadens in scope, and the characters are larger than life, taking on mythical proportions. Then when he appears to be a point of personal crisis, the story dwindles into n obvious allegory to his own problems. But this is the point.

This works.

This works artistically, aesthetically, and generally.

However,

it makes the dénouement of the film seem dubious. Roy Walker is rapidly in a period of self doubt, paranoia, and absolutely no hope, but he turns so quickly, rather than seeming to exhibit it fully, that he seems to implode, as des the story he tells. Abstractly, this works brilliantly, but it makes the film feel slightly uneven for all of its wonderful Jodorowskian imagery and beautiful pathos felt from the poor man Roy, who has lost his lover, and quite probably his ability to walk.

The film is, a film about film in more ways than one, adapted from a Bulgarian film that was no doubt one of Tarsem’s favorites, and also a film about a slient film stuntman who is injured performing a suicidal stunt to win back the affections of his girlfriend.

The Fall by Tarsem Singh is a beautiful film, if flawed in that beauty. Taking obvious inspiration from films by Alejandro Jodorowski, the Fall is nearly as grandiose as Jodorowski’s The Holy Mountain, and as rich as a story handed down from oral tradition. It is so rich that one wonders how anything in this film can possibly exist, mainly the blue city, a society made only of buildings painted blue, the never-ending zigzag staircase, the giant bloodied cloth covering the bodies of hundreds of dead, or the spirit guide emerging from a tree. But they all do. None of the extraordinary images in this film have been created by computer generated effects, which makes the film, as unbelievable as it is, simultaneously real and unreal. It is real, but unreal in how real it is.

Note: Those who call “The Fall” a reworking of “The Princess Bride,” are:

A) ignorant enough to assume that Tarsem garnered these astounding, exotic visuals, from a mainstream American film whose story is the only real standout, rather than the visuals, and

B) ignorant of the end credits which credits the original idea of the film to the 1981 Bulgarian film “Yo Ho Ho.”