Robert Ebert, renowned American film critic, made such a comment in his review of The Fall...

"You might want to see for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it."

In fact, I believe that what I wrote in my Facebook status on 15th November 2008 pretty much sums up my viewing experience of The Fall...

"... is totally mesmerized by 'The Fall'! Brilliant cast, magnificant cinematography, breathtaking scenaries, beautiful story. What more could u ask?"

Indeed. With a movie like this, what more could you ask for?



Directed by:

Tarsem Singh

Written by:

Dan Gilroy
Nico Soultanakis
Tarsem Singh

Cast:

Catinca Untaru -------- Alexandria / The Black Bandit's daughter
Lee Pace -------------- Roy / The Black Bandit
Justine Waddell ------- Nurse Evelyn / Sister Evelyn
Robin Smith ---------- One-legged actor / Luigi, explosives expert
Jeetu Verma ---------- Orange picker / The Indian
Leo Bill ---------------- Orderly / Charles Darwin
Marcus Wesley -------- Ice delivery man / Otta Benga
Julian Bleach ---------- Orange picker / Mystic
Daniel Caltagirone ----- Sinclair, the actor / The evil Governor Odious


The skinny: (shortened from the synopsis on Wiki, which contains major spoilers!)

Roy Walker (Lee Pace), an early 20th century Hollywood stuntman, lands in the hospital after performing a dangerous stunt to impress his girlfriend. Distraught and suicidal after losing her, the bedridden Roy befriends a fellow patient, a young girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru). He enchants her with vivid, fantastical tales about six heroes, all of whom are dedicated to fighting a common enemy, the "evil Governor Odious."Although Roy has genuine affection for Alexandria, he also has an ulterior motive: by telling tales and gaining her trust, he tricks her into stealing morphine from the hospital pharmacy so he can commit suicide. As the line between fact and fantasy blurs, real-life people begin to populate Roy's fictitious stories, and the stakes are raised as Roy's intent of suicide escalates while Alexandria becomes completely mesmerized by the ever-changing epic.

A little background...

The Fall has been described as director/screenwriter Tarsem Singh's vanity project, and the truth is not far from it. As I gathered from various interviews and commentaries, The Fall was actually conceived a long long time ago, but was only materialized when Tarsem, known mainly for his commericals for Pepsi, had the means to finance the project out of his own pocket. Word has it that he had approached several big film studios to produce the movie, but was either turned down, or was forced to turn it into a movie for kids (as what Lee Pace commented upon hearing this, "what would they have done to the suicide thing then?")

So, about 10 years ago, Tarsem began location-scouting for The Fall in the hope that one day he would be able to make his movie. When the time came, what resulted was an awesome movie which features landscapes, architecture, scenery etc. from no less than 24 locations, with the bulk of the action situated in South Africa, and various wonderous locations in exotic India. Other countries where they cast and crew filmed in included Ladakh, Cambodia, Spain, China, Indonesia, France and many many more.

Can you recognize all these locations below? Hint... nothing is being digitally altered in the pictures and all these locations are authentic (of course, these are just a fraction of all the locations they went to):







Given any mordern-day director, such fantastic backdrops would likely only be achieved through the use of computer graphics, blue screens and the creativity of a set designer. However, for Tarsem, this was not the case. In fact, it was hard to believe that Tarsem indeed did not use any CGI until I watched the featurette that came with DVD, where you saw for your own eyes how each location transformed into this breathtaking look through Tarsem's clever use of angles. For example, the Escher-looking locations such as the 'Labyrinth of Dispair' was in fact an ancient Indian observatory.

But more than that, just watching Tarsem and his cast and crew being there and then in all these locations, I couldn't help but marvel to myself, "such amazing places actually exist on earth!"

Such is the power of the camera, but only when manipulated by one who has the eye for such beauty. Tarsem is one of them.

The look

The reality sequences were suitably dull, creating just the right environment in which a 6 year-old girl and a bedridden man would conjure up a story about bandits and love and revenge. However, when it comes to the fantasy sequence, the look is whimsical yet still believeable. The entire fantasy was portrayed through the mind of Alexandria, who interpreted Roy's ideas in her own fashion, for example, taking the "Indian" to refer to one who had come from India, even though Roy had really meant "Red Indian". The actors in the fantasy also played their scenes to look like a tableux, as if these images had popped right out of a picture book. A real feast on the eyes indeed.

The script

The story, apparently is not original, but is actually based loosely on an old Bulgarian movie Yo Ho Ho from the early 80s. Nevertheless, even Tarsem himself has repeatedly mentioned that he had gained the inspiration of The Fall from this movie. However, many who have watched Yo Ho Ho found The Fall to be only similar in theme, virtually unrecognizable from the original movie.

Whether the theme is similar or not, I find the who premise of The Fall brilliant. The whole concept of shared imagination works very well in this story where the fantasy sequence is not merely an entertainment piece. It is a medium in which Roy's innermost angst and bitterness is manifested, to which the innocent but very intuitive Alexandria picks up on subconsciously, proceeding to increase her investment in the fantasy to prevent the tragedy which he had set himself up for. Realizing that the stakes are high and very real in the events that unfold in the fantasy, audiences respond emotionally not only towards the characters of Roy and Alexandria, but also to the Black Bandit (Roy), his daughter (Alexandria), and all the other heroes in the fantasy.

Tarsem made it clear from early on that the crew should rely completely on the cast in deciding how the script would be written, mainly because "a five year old is not going to buy into what you write". A very clever decision on Tarsem's part, which was evident especially in the hospital scenes where Roy and Alexandria would engage in spontaneous conversations. In these scenes, Tarsem basically would have actors Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru sitting on the bed with the curtains covered, whereas unbeknownst to little Catinca, there were in fact holes in the curtains so that the camera could capture every genuine action that the 6-year-old would conjure as she bonded with Lee. This created some of the best elements of the story, for example, when Catinca genuinely mistook the spelling of "morphine" as "m-o-r-p-h-i-n-3". Tarsem immediately took opportunity of the situation by changing the script to Alexandria stealing a full bottle of Morphine, but throwing the rest away and leaving only 3 tablets for Roy because he "only asked for 3".



Watching Catinca in this movie is very different from watching other child actors in bigger-budgetted movies where their dialogue make them sound really mature for their ages. However, by giving little Catinca the freedom to deliver her lines the way she needs to, Tarsem has created a character who speaks and acts is just like any other child. It's hard not to be charmed by little Catinca indeed. Through such an approach in filming, one could also really feel a deep sense of affection that both Roy and Alexandria had for each other. In fact, as co-writer Nico Soultanakis aptly puts it, this movie is essentially a love story between a child and an adult.

The cast

Catinca Untaru, the 6 year-old Romanian actress selected to play the role of Alexandria, was simply charming. As mentioned, Tarsem basically allowed Catinca to deliver the lines as she felt most comfortable with, i.e. in exactly the same kind of broken English that a non-native child would utter. Also, the way Tarsem filmed the scenes between Lee and Catinca also meant that all the nose-picking, the fidgetting, the gnawing on the cast all looked as real as they get. All these, combined with Catinca's adorable looks (chubby, rosy cheeks and bright blue eyes...) and innocence, all made the character Alexandria very real, very natural and very likeable indeed.

I also adored the chemistry between Catinca and Lee. While halfway into the movie Roy had begun to use Alexandria to obtain morphine to kill himself, you almost don't blame him as you could easily sense that the affection between them was mutual and genuine, and that Roy was indeed a broken man struggling to come to terms with all that has happened to him. The onscreen chemistry was reflected in real life as well, apparently, when about a week into the shooting Catinca got so attached to Lee that she would draw pictures for him and fetch him desserts during meals.



Tarsem has said repeatedly in numerous interviews that Lee Pace was his first and only choice to play the role of Roy, a decision which he made after watching Soldier's Girl. Lee certainly rose to the occasion. From the depressed and spiritually weakened Roy to the tableux-y and heroic Black Bandit, it looks like no character can be too difficult for the talented Lee to tackle.

In fact, for the role of Roy, Lee not only had to play his own character well, he had to, in his own capacity as an actor, accomodate little Catinca in the scenes he shared with her. From the commentaries and featurettes, such examples included shifting his head when he saw that the inexperienced Catinca had lean her face into his shadow, or improvising his lines when he saw that Catinca was not giving the cameras the rections they wanted. I believe that it is anecdotes like this that points towards the kind of actor Lee really is - humble, professional, convicted to his craft and generous. I sure hope that such a positive attitude towards his profession does not change over time. As long as he maintains that attitude, plus his talents, I'm sure he will have a bright future in the industry.

A little video

This came from the beginning when Alexandria first meets Roy, and when Roy tells her the first story of Alexander the Great. Tarsem shot the movie chronologically, which means that this first meeting was also the first time Catinca had met Lee Pace. As Lee Pace was presented to Catinca as a real-life paraplegic (a deliberate arrangement on Tarsem's part), Catinca was truly scared of Lee at first. However, once she warmed up, there was wonderful chemistry already present in this first meeting. You can also see what I meant from this clip about how Tarsem managed to capture all the innocence of a child without compromising on the flow of the script.

Apart from watching the chemistry between the two leads, this first story was an important lead-in to the main fantasy v.s. reality portion of the movie. It kind of taught you how to watch this movie, that you had to be expected to go to and fro in both sequences, and that the fantasy would be influenced by events happening there and then in the reality.

Part 1:



Part 2:



Conclusion

The last I saw at IMDB.com The Fall garnered a total of more than 10,000 votes, with an average score of 8/10, which is very impressive. In fact, the bulk of voters, about 31% of them, had given The Fall a full score of 10/10. By any standard, this tells you a lot about how viewers in general felt about this movie which no production company wanted to produced and received only limited screening in theatres 2 years after it was completed.

So what if this was Tarsem's vanity project? To quote from Ebert, watch this because it exists, and because you might never get a chance to see another like this again.

Trivia: (from IMDB.com)

A miscommunication between the casting agent and Catinca Untaru led her to believe that Lee Pace was a real-life paraplegic. Director Tarsem Singh found that this brought an added level of believability to their dialogue, so he decided to keep almost the entire cast and crew under the same impression by getting Lee to be a paraplegic both onscreen and offscreen for two whole months during the filming of the entire reality sequence.

Tarsem shot the hospital scenes with Catinca Untaru in chronological order. As filming progressed over the course of six weeks, she grew taller and her English improved, like her character would have in real life. She also lost her two front baby teeth right before shooting began, so filming in sequence allowed for the continuity of the gap between her teeth to remain consistent.

Darwin's monkey "Wallace" is a reference to the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace who independently developed the idea of natural selection. Darwin and Wallace presented the theory together, but due to the publication of "On the Origin of Species" Darwin usually gets sole credit for the theory.

While trying to get financing for the film, Tarsem Singh put together a small memory box much like Alexandria and used it as a tool during pitch meetings.

Links...

Click here for the official website.

See here for official promotional video clips from the movie.

Click here for Robert Ebert's review of The Fall.