For the majority of 2008, I had been waiting to see a movie that makes me lose my shit. A couple of them came very close. I can fully acknowledge my absolute adoration for Michel Gondry’s 3rd masterpiece in a row, Be Kind Rewind, as well as David Gordon Green’s 2nd best film to date, Snow Angels. But there is serious bias there since those are two of my favorite directors working today and I expected their films to rock my socks off. Although I certainly enjoyed watching both Iron Man and Indiana Jones, neither will be re-watched or deconstructed upon further viewing. They sat well with me, I digested them just fine, but I do have a preference to the types of films that I call ‘favorites.’ I have no qualms with leaving my IQ at the door, and relishing in good old-fashioned summer escapist entertainment like the two titles mentioned previous, but I also wasn’t thinking about them after I walked out of the theater other than acknowledging the impeccable chase sequences and the otherworldly charisma of Robert Downey, Jr. This year’s been tough on me, or I’ve been tough on it when it comes to my 2nd love, the cinema.
So out of the blue comes this movie called The Fall. Now, once again, I don’t expect most peeps to get behind me on this one and declare it one of the year’s best films the way I am. It’s a pretentious arthouse film that doesn’t have peppy one-liners or CGI monkeys helping Shia LeBouf get that crystal skull. It’s flawed for certain, but no film this year intoxicated me and left me breathless the way this one did. It’s more of a visual experience rather than an emotional one, but that’s the beauty of watching movies. Directors like Cronenberg and Tarantino can hit on all levels, but more often than not, there are individual facets of a film that move me so much, that I forgive the glaring flaws. I am incredibly moved by the language of David Mamet movies, despite the fact that the acting is stilted (why does he keep casting his wife?) and the direction is unspectacular (the final scenes of Redbelt were horribly constructed). Sometimes I’ll see a movie that is so fiercely manipulative, but because the acting is stellar, I love it nonetheless. The Fall falls under a category where I fell in love with its imagination, rather than the story or screenplay.
Essentially, it plays almost like a twisted version of The Princess Bride crossbred with Pan’s Labyrinth, despite not quite being as memorable as either of those influences. The thing about The Fall is the backstory. The director, Tarsem, spent eight years making this thing, and filmed on location in obscured places all across the world. Also, he allowed the majority of the scenes featuring a child actor, to be improvised, allowing the story to unfold through the child’s perspective. (Robert Rodriguez failed miserably at doing something similar by letting his kids help compose a screenplay with The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava-Girl). The movie’s story revolves around Roy Walker, a bedridden stuntman in a hospital who befriends a fellow patient, a portly and curious young girl called Alexandria. To occupy the time and to manipulate her to his own advantage, he weaves a vivid, fantastical story of exotic lands. He conjures up a group of five heroes: an Indian, an ex-slave, an explosive expert, a masked bandit and, in a bit of revisionist history, famed evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin. They unite to fight a common enemy, Governor Odious, who has banished them all and caused them serious strife. Interspersed with the tale he tells, is the reality both of them face. Her traumatic childhood featuring a farmer father who dealt with opposing forces, and Roy’s own enemy, the man who took his true love away from him.
But there’s something that snuck up on me towards the end of this movie. I became emotionally involved in the characters, despite the characters themselves not becoming fully fleshed out. The story world and the real world don’t always interconnect flawlessly, but that’s due to the fact that neither of its creators are masterful at constructing a consistent narrative. Plus one of them is doped up most of the time on morphine. There’s a scene towards the end where Roy divulges to Alexandria, his reasons for befriending her, that tore me up inside. I think it was just the fact that both characters wanted to escape inside the fantasy they’d made together in storyland so badly, rather than deal with their pasts and the harsh reality they both continue to face. The ending itself mirrors Be Kind Rewind in a collective appreciation of artistic expression itself.
Roger Ebert calls The Fall, “a celebration of the imagination” and I couldn’t agree more. For a guy who loves equally the work of David Lynch and Terry Gilliam, this struck a happy balance between the worlds that those directors create in a way that is harmonious. If you take away the story, then at the very least, you have frame after frame of astonishing cinematography to the point where you go ‘how the fuck did they do that?’ Tarsem has made one other film, in which style suffocated the substance to the point where it became unbearable to watch. It was essentially The Silence of The Lambs meets a bad Freddy Krueger sequel, and that’s not a complement. The Cell, featured J-Lo running around in loose clothes as a psychiatrist (!) that infiltrates people’s dreams to help them deal with schizophrenia and/or post-traumatic stress. Low and behold, she must enter the mind of a serial killer (there’s the tagline right there). For those who have not seen the movie, Dreamscape, it’s safe to say that I’m shocked that Tarsem didn’t get sued for copyright infringement. Dreamscape, being the better film, albeit very dated. But let’s not dismiss Tarsem on the basis of his debut, because his follow-up is anything but a sophomore slump. It’s one of those rare experiences that makes the outside world seem new and fresh again, not unlike the time I walked out of seeing Terrence Malick’s The New World a couple years back. I know most folks won’t feel the same way, saying that once again, Tarsem is a director of style and very little substance. Personally, I think he’s made an incredible step-up from making a bland and repulsive serial killer movie to The Fall, which is uplifting, gorgeous, and makes you fall in love with the moviegoing experience all over again. What can you say about a movie that features swimming elephants, an island of pristine white sand in the middle of a sparkling ocean and a massive labyrinth of gold? This is the Land of Oz told through the eyes of a visionary, and it’s a little bit more accessible than David Lynch’s take on the fairytale (with his 2nd best film, Wild at Heart). Time will tell if Tarsem is going to shake the foundations with audiences, and I’m almost certain The Fall will not be a mainstream success, but that shouldn’t deter you from running to the nearest multiplex to seek it out. Who needs hallucinogens when there are movies like these? Did I mention that it’s produced / presented by David Fincher and Spike Jonze?
