Movie Review - 'The Fall'

The Fall

Starring Catinca Untaru, Lee Pace, and Justine Waddell
Directed by Tarsem
Rated R

If there's a more lyrical, more sumptuously photographed three minutes of film this year than the opening sequence in Tarsem's The Fall, pay good money to see it.

It takes a few minutes to figure out what the stunning black and white cinematography has to do with the story, but it soon becomes very clear. There are lots of things I wished about The Fall, and that the film kept up with its opening's remarkable beauty and momentum was one of them.

The action is split in half. There's a hospital in Los Angeles where a precocious girl (Catinca Untaru), the daughter of migrant workers, recovers from a fall that has left her right arm and part of her torso in a giant cast. She makes fast friends with a bedridden stuntman (Lee Pace), who, as you might suspect, has had a fall of his own.

The stuntman is also suffering sever heartache at the loss of his love to another man, which is probably more life threatening than the physical scars he bears.

The unlikely friendship is sparked by a story the stuntman begins to tell the girl, and in wide-eyed, Princess Bride fashion, we watch the story unfold through the colorful imagination of a child.

Five men, imprisoned on a tiny island by a tyrant, seek revenge. There's a leader of this roguish band of heroes, who closely resembles our storyteller, the fallen stuntman. There's also a beautiful princess who, in the mind of the child, looks like her nurse (Justine Waddell). 

The cinematography throughout the improvised story of happily ever after (or not) is the real driving force in The Fall. You feel cheated when Tarsem (The Cell) returns us to the sweaty confines of a dilapidated hospital. We exchange scorching desert and vibrant reds and blues for a ward of sick people. It is not a fair trade.

In fact, that kind of underscores the trouble with The Fall. Had it been just a tall tale, told from beginning to end without the interruptions from the lives of those telling and imagining it, this would be one of the most original movies of the year. As it is, The Fall is messy, ill-fitting and distracting, like a hurriedly tucked in shirt on a bridegroom. Rather than being able to focus on the beauty, you can only stare at the faults.

The movie was filmed in 18 countries, only one of which was needed for the hospital scenes. So why are they splitting so much time with the rest of the film?

It's a bold experiment, no doubt. But The Fall simply gets in its own way, trying to do too much by showing too little.