The Fall<\/em>\u2019s fairytale undertones are established by the onscreen title \u201cLos Angeles, once upon a time.\u201d Set in the 1910s, it takes place in the hospital where paraplegic stuntman Roy (Lee Pace) lies bedridden after an injury on set. He passes the time by telling stories to Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), an immigrant girl whose arm was injured in an arson attack on her family\u2019s home. Roy dreams up an alter ego, an androgynous bandit sporting a mask, and pictures people from his life, played by the same actors, as storybook heroes fighting Captain Odious (Daniel Caltagirone). For him, this storytelling has a transactional dimension: he flatters Alexandria, encouraging her to steal morphine from the pharmacy so that he can kill himself. He feels betrayed by his ex-girlfriend, who abandoned him in favor of the actor he served by performing his deadly stunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This film was a labor of love for Tarsem, who spent six years on a shoot built around his schedule making commercials around the world. Remarkably, the budget was only $30 million; it looks far more expensive. Particularly in its fantasy scenes, The Fall<\/em> evinces an \u201cevery frame a painting\u201d aesthetic. In the desert, the blue sky and orange sand are impossibly deep. Yet no matter how much they may have been altered in post-production, The Fall<\/em> looks like a product of the analog era. Instead of projecting a fantastic world onto greenscreens for actors to react against, Tarsem took after his characters and roamed the globe in search of fitting locations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s no attempt to bring out the specifics of the real-life settings, which included India, Bali, Argentina and France. The hospital, set in Los Angeles, was actually shot in Cape Town, South Africa. The fantasy scenes are given a vividness that dwarfs the film\u2019s version of reality. (Even their sound mix is much clearer.) Yet they prove to be a combination of images from Roy and Alexandria\u2019s mental stock of imagery and lived experience, jumbled together as their minds merge in the act of storytelling. The film dreams up an imaginary setting based on the characters of its time. Untaru\u2019s performance is a decisive element, although perhaps not for intended reasons: while her broken English may be realistic, her accent muddies the dialogue, placing even more emphasis on visual communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If anything, The Fall<\/em> can be too pretty for its own good. Tarsem\u2019s direction tries to overwhelm the spectator, with extreme long shot after extreme long shot of palaces, courtyards, and the sea. His camera gazes up in awe as people climb up and down a labyrinth or an elephant takes a swim. The sensual beauty of the fantasy scene\u2019s colors contrasts with the brown cinematography and cramped camera angles of the 1910s scenes, reflecting the confinement of the hospital. But the film\u2019s real agenda becomes clearer by the halfway point. The holes in its characters\u2019 imaginary scenario get more and more apparent. Reality seeps through, albeit in increasingly unsettling ways. The shape of a pinned butterfly is mirrored by a beach and its surrounding sea. When Roy passes out from a drug overdose, the cinematography turns white.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Fall<\/em> was not a commercial success, only earning back $3.7 million worldwide in its 2008 release, two years after it was completed. While Tarsem\u2019s subsequent career has gone well enough for him to complete four more features (as well as Lady Gaga\u2019s \u201c911\u201d video, which pays tribute to Sergei Paradjanov), his first two\u00a0 films did not set him on a path towards acclaim and constant work. Until MUBI acquired the current restoration, it was unavailable on streaming and long out of print on Blu-Ray. Still, as so often happens, its initial failure led to adoption as a cult film. Potentially accessible to a family audience, its downbeat story, violent images, and artiness prevented it from finding one. But Tarsem\u2019s devotion to cinema comes through in every shot.\u00a0 The choice to end with a montage of film stunts seethes with an ambivalence towards the danger inherent in making movies. The period when a film this eccentric could be made on a 8-figure budget, with an eye on reaching a wide audience, seems almost as distant as the silent era.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Fall” streams Friday on MUBI<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/fall2-1024x788.jpg\")
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