TRAILER
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=iO0LYcCoeJY
The Fall is an absolute labor of love for director Tarsem Singh (Famous for his commercial work and the Jennifer Lopez stinker ‘The Cell). He worked on it on and off for four years, shot it in 20 different countries and paid the bill out of his own pockets. The final product was presented by ‘David Fincher and Spike Jonze’, it premiered at Toronto International Film Festival and then it...disappeared. What happened? Well, it rotted on a shelf for two years, got a little art house release and is now hitting store with little to no fanfare. So I think that…Don’t leave yet! Give me a chance to talk about it first, then, you can leave.
It’s the early 1900’s and a young flicker show stuntman (Lee Palace, star of television’s Pushing Daisies) has a horrible accident that paralyzes the lower half of his body. While lying in bed in the hospital he befriends a young girl (Cantinca Untaru) who’s broken her arm. To pass the time, he starts tell her a story about five men (All of them part of her life) and the evil emperor they must defeat. The story is nothing but a means to an end, because the girl will do anything to hear the end of it, even if that thing is stealing morphine. All the stuntman wants is enough to help him go to sleep for a long…long…time. Then he’ll finish the story.
You will not see ANYTHING as visually intoxicating (Don’t watch and drive) as THE FALL this year. This is the stuff High-Def Blue Ray Players were born to project 100 feet high in your living room. Everything during the ‘fantasy’ parts of the film could easily be paused, framed and hung on a fancy looking wall.It’s finely detailed, awe inspiring and will turn your eyeballs into desperate addicts for visual stimulus. The merry elements of the frame feature the color control of Zhang Yimou by way of Terry Gilliam’s imagination with the clutter cut out and simplicity taking the forefront. Large mountains, things on fire in a dramatic fashion, big old buildings under a blinding blue sky…It’s all here. Every fantasy sequence is guaranteed to feature gigantic naturally crafted tableaus with tiny little characters in the background to emphasize how huge it all is. It’s all about majestic and grand. B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L
Got it? Good. Lets get to the unpleasent stuff now.
The main thematic drive of the film: ‘The magic and power of storytelling’ is too simplistically presented to ever make an impact. There are some clever tricks along the way (Mostly how the Fantasy is always affected by real life) but those beats are hit on the head in an auto-piloted fashion. The whole thing would have been a difficult slog if it weren’t for the warm performance by the puppy eyed Lee Palace and the wondrous little actress Cantinca Untaru. I’m a child actor hater. It’s a problem; yet, I never rolled my eyes and cursed the little devils spawns every time she appeared on screen. It looks like they just turned the cameras on and she reacted to the events going on around her. The ‘real-life’ scenes of the film are visually unimpressive and relatively down to earth, backed by real performances and weighted down by enough realism to actually make you care. Not enough to really make a difference, but enough to make it worthwhile. The Fall is a must see film if you’re aware of it contains: A beautiful awe inspiring picture frame with a "Meh. Okay?" painting ub the middle.
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