The Fall (2008)
Nov 5th, 2008 by John Murphy
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Directed by Tarsem
Reviewed by John Murphy
Tarsem, the mononomic commercial and music video director, self-financed this visually stunning labor of love, filmed over years in over a dozen countries. The product is a lavish, inventive, and darkly imaginative spectacle. A woman is trapped in a labyrinth, birds fly from a shaman’s mouth, island-exiled bandits hitch a ride with a seafaring elephant, and crimson blood slowly seeps across a cloth tower a hundred feet high. It’s all part of a magical yarn that an injured Hollywood stuntman is spinning for the benefit of a fellow hospital inmate: 5-year old Romanian girl, Alexandria. What begins as an endearing, odd-couple friendship between two convalescents turns dark when the stuntman, named Roy, depressed by a break-up with his leading lady, asks his naive new friend to steal morphine for him. The idea occurs to him after Alexandria brings him a box of unconsecrated hosts lifted from the hospital chapel. She’s too young to see the white circles of bread as anything other than a tasty snack, but Roy asks her, “Are you trying to save my soul?”
She is, and his story may prove his redemption. The two strands, fantasy and reality, interweave more tightly as the movie unfolds, and it becomes clear to us (and Alexandria) that the outcome of the fantasy will determine the outcome of reality. Tarsem paints the screen in saturated colors framed in majestic compositions, but there is substance behind the eye-popping surface style. The Fall is about storytelling, movies, and our collective trust in narrators to do the right thing by their sub-created characters — it is a form of morality. Though mind-blowing images are Tarsem’s calling card (and they are in full flower here), The Fall succeeds where his earlier film, The Cell, failed: as an emotionally involving story. The girl brought Christ to Roy, the despairing stuntman. He is redeemed through the young girl’s simple act of self-giving, and her total trust in him to provide the right ending. It’s a beautiful tale, and the painterly photography is just icing on the cake.
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