Fantastic Landscapes
Tarsem indulges his imagination in ‘The Fall’
By Andy Klein
The summer I was eight years old, I was driven to camp every day – along with five or six other kids – by one of the counselors. In order to keep us in line, “Uncle Bernie” Snyder would give (or withhold, if we were bad) stories of the swashbuckling hero Ben Gurin, his Cloak of Invisibility, his Magic Ring, and his loyal sidekicks. I can no longer remember many details, but it was several years before I realized that most of the plot elements were adapted from The Arabian Nights (with bits of Saturday matinee serials mixed in) and his hero’s name – perhaps ironically, in hindsight – from the then-prime minister of Israel.
I have no idea whether everyone has an Uncle Bernie somewhere in their past, but I hope so, because my fragmentary memories of his stories still hold a magical place in my imagination. I assume the experience was not unique, since The Fall, the new film from director Tarsem Singh (who professionally goes by first name only), is built around a similar idea.
In the period before World War I, five-year-old Alexandria (Romanian actress Catinca Untaru) is in a Los Angeles hospital, recuperating from a broken arm. Among the other patients is Roy (Lee Pace), a movie stuntman paralyzed from a fall and depressed over the loss of his girlfriend, who has taken up with the very actor (Daniel Caltagirone) he was doubling for. Roy knows that Alexandria has the run of the hospital, so he starts spinning her a fantastical tale and then threatens not to continue unless she fetches something for him – the pills he needs to kill himself.
Roy tells of a band of six warriors, seeking revenge against the evil Governor Odious (Caltagirone again) – an Indian (Jeetu Verma), an explosives expert (Robin Smith), an escaped slave (Marcus Wesley), Charles Darwin (Leo Bill), the Mystic (Julian Bleach), and their leader, the Masked Bandit. As the little girl visualizes the story, each of these characters bears a striking resemblance to someone she knows; tellingly, the Masked Bandit at first looks like her late father (Emil Hostina) but then turns into Roy. That the version we see is in her mind, not Roy’s, is driven home by the film’s best joke: The Indian in Roy’s narration has a squaw and a wigwam, but Alexandria sees him as the turban-wearing Indian who works with her family in the orange groves.
Tarsem started out directing commercials (Nike) and music videos (“Losing My Religion”) before making his first feature, 2000’s The Cell, with Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn, in which it was clear that his central concern was visuals, not narrative. It received mixed-to-negative reviews, but was championed by Roger Ebert. Whatever its flaws, it displayed a prodigious visual imagination.
Tarsem clearly chose to make The Fall – which he adapted with Dan Gilroy and Nico Soultanakis from the 1981 Bulgarian film Yo Ho Ho (directed by Zako Heskija and scripted by Valeri Petrov) – as an excuse to splash more beautiful images across the screen. And splash he does, from the gorgeous black-and-white of the pre-credit sequence to the desert landscapes of Roy’s story. The only problem is that the story is precisely the hodgepodge a young amateur might realistically improvise; it has little of the wit or invention of the most obvious cinematic comparison, The Princess Bride.
There are some other narrative problems: Late in the movie, one seemingly important bit of exposition is so unclear that no one leaving my screening was quite sure what had happened. And, more significantly, the last half hour, as Roy’s bitterness turns the story into a nightmare, becomes downright sadistic; his behavior toward a sick little girl is so brutal that we lose all sympathy for him. My colleague Ray Greene points out that this plot curve is identical to J.D. Salinger’s “The Laughing Man,” one of my favorite short stories. I can only argue that Salinger effects it swiftly, whereas Tarsem attenuates it torturously.
But, even then, the visuals hold us rapt, as does Untaru’s amazingly natural performance.
The Fall. Directed by Tarsem. Screenplay by Dan Gilroy, Nico Soultanakis, and Tarsem Singh; based on the 1981 screenplay Yo Ho Ho by Valeri Petrov. With Lee Pace, Catinca Untaru, Robin Smith, Justine Waddell, Leo Bill, and Julian Bleach. Opens Friday at the Landmark West Los Angeles, AMC Loews Broadway 4, and Laemmle’s Playhouse 7.
Published: 05/07/2008
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