Every couple months I plan to deviate from music to post about some other bit of obscure media. Considering that many best-of-08 list are coming out, I figured I'd blog about a film that's been mentioned on several of them.
The Fall debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006 and received "wide" release in 2008. Wide is defined here as slightly over 100 screens. Directed by Tarsem Singh (The Cell, R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion"), The Fall is quite possibly the most beautiful piece of film-making I have witnessed.
Set in 1920s Los Angeles, the plot revolves around an injured stuntman, Roy (Lee Pace, Pushing Daisies), and Alexandria, a young immigrant worker who broke her arm while picking oranges. In an effort to gain Alexandria's help and trust, Roy tells her an epic tale.
The interplay between the story that Roy tells and the way the the audience sees it--through Alexandria's imagination--is interesting. Objects and people from her life are interwoven into Roy's story. When Roy speaks of an Indian, Alexandria doesn't imagine a Native American, but a man from India, a fellow orange-picker. By the end of both the movie and the story, the narrative is as much Alexandria's as Roy's.
This is not a mainstream film. It is slow in parts and meanders here and there. It avoids sentimentality in favor of harsher mettle. In that way, it shares common ground with Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone. It is also very beautiful. The Fall was shot entirely on location and contains very few non-practical effects. While the fairy-tale settings of Roy's story are breath-taking, as much care was taken with the 'real' setting of the hospital where the characters are laid-up.
By sheer virtue of movie-making, it is phenomenal.
The Fall is available on DVD and Blu-ray.
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