The Fall (2008) Synopsis:
Los Angeles, circa 1920's, a little immigrant girl (Catinca Untaru) finds herself in a hospital recovering from a fall. She strikes up a friendship with a bedridden man (Lee Pace) who captivates her with a whimsical story that removes her far from the hospital doldrums into the exotic landscapes of her imagination. Making sure he keeps the girl interested in the story he interweaves her family and people she likes from the hospital into his tale.
The Fall (2008) Movie Review:
Visually gifted filmmaker Tarsem Singh, or also know as Tarsem, delivers the audience a visually arousing spectacle film with The Fall. Unfortunately, the center of the film is as hollow a story as we have seen with no pulse or energy outside of its visuals.
The story takes place in the early 1900’s, where a movie stuntman named Roy (Lee Pace) has been injured on the job and is laid up in a cozy hospital bed. He begins a friendship with a 5 year-old girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), who is also banged up with a broken arm. Roy begins to tell Alexandria epic adventure stories of a group of buccaneers, who look to act revenge on an evil dictator Governor Odious (Daniel Caltagirone). The buccaneers include the Masked Bandit (also Pace), the arsonist Luigi (Robin Smith), a sword totting Indian (Jeetu Verma), an escaped slave (Marcus Wesley), and Charles Darwin (Leo Bill) himself. The stories are told through Roy’s voice, but the audience’s vision is through Alexandria’s imagination, which includes a swimming elephant, a maze, a blue city, an orange desert and an island in the middle of a bright ocean. Roy only tells Alexandria tidbits of the stories to keep her wanting more. He eventually talks her into sneaking him some morphine pills to take so that he can end his sorrows by taking his own life. As the story itself moves on, Alexandria’s imagination grows, as it becomes more and more violent and full of sadness.
There are numerous visually comparable films to The Fall, such as The Wizard of Oz, Pan’s Labyrinth, Big Fish, and The Princess Bride. However, all of those films also had a strong story to them, outside of being visually enchanting, which The Fall does not. Tarsem also co-wrote the script with Dan Gilroy and Nico Soultanakis, which is the disaster of the film; there is no backbone or life in the story of The Fall. Tarsem used his own money to finance this film and shot it over 4 years in over 15 different countries. His efforts are commendable and his visual style is appealing as it has been in his past music video works and his last film The Cell. Unfortunately, visual eye candy or visual flair does not help with there is an incoherent story and deflatable characters.
Young Catinca Untaru does not seem comfortable one bit in her role as Alexandria. Though she is cute, she looked lost; perhaps she will mature in time with more roles. Lee Pace is average at best as Roy, though it seems that he would have been played by an actor with more presence. Justine Waddell is practically wasted in her dual roles in the film, though she does get to wear some great costumes.
The Fall seemed like a very hard film to shoot and create, and director Tarsem is an excellent visual filmmaker. On the other hand, the film’s script is invisible and lacks any type of substance, thus bringing the film down so far that its visual mastery can not save it.
Our Rating: 
User Rating: 
Log in to rate this movie
The Fall (2008) review written by: Bailey Henderson
12th October, 2008 
