The Fall (Tarsem, 2006)

[X.]

I've been closely watching for news on Tarsem Singh's new film. I just love the man and his stylistic decadence. "The Cell" remains a perfect movie.

I will be pimping "The Fall" long and hard on this board, you can count on that, baby.

The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Here's one of the first credible reviews:

The whole time I sat there watching The Fall, the latest film from acclaimed Indian director Tarsem, I found myself listing off all of the elements of the movie that I liked: the sumptuous, almost decadent visuals; the fantastical, whimsical story within a story; the themes about the power of myth and storytelling; the clever layers of strongly-acted characters; and best of all, the fact that the lead child actor was cute, but in a blessedly non-precocious manner.

And yet, I also sat there confounded as to why I wasn't enjoying all of these things as much as I thought I really should be. For me, The Fall was one of those rare movie experiences, a movie that does practically everything right, and yet in the end, fails to move you beyond praising its many obvious technical merits.

The Fall (which is based on the 1981 Bulgarian film Yo Ho Ho) opens in hospital on the outskirts of Los Angeles circa the 1920s. A young immigrant girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) is recovering from a broken arm she suffered while picking oranges with the rest of her migrant family. In the short time she's been there, she's quickly worked her way into the hearts of everyone and now has free run of the place.

As she wanders the hospital's halls, she meets Roy Walker (Lee Pace), a Hollywood stuntman who is recovering from an accident he suffered on the set, an accident that has cost him his legs. The two seem an unlikely pair, but they instantly hit it off, and Alexandria becomes especially enamored when Roy begins telling her a fantastic story about 5 heroes and their quest to overthrow an evil governor.

Soon enough, Alexandria gets caught up in the story, and the thin layer between reality and myth begins to fade before her eyes. Folks from the real world begin popping up in Roy's story as he tells it, often in very humorous ways, while story elements begin to inform and influence Alexandria's decisions. However, Roy is reluctant to continue telling the story. After some cajoling, he agrees to do so on one condition: Alexandria must get him some special pills to help him sleep. Little does she know that Roy, who is despondent over the loss of his legs and his lover's betrayal, is planning to commit suicide.

Throughout the movie, I heard many "oohs" and "ahs", and for good reason. The Fall is an extremely lovely film, easily one of the most visually stunning films of the festival (the little still accompanying this review really doesn't do the film's visuals justice at all). Tarsem, who previously directed 2000's The Cell but is best known for his commercial and music video work, packs every frame with something dazzling -- elaborate costumes, jawdropping vistas and cityscapes, a huge Russian wagon pulled through the desert by a hundred slaves, and a wedding ceremony accompanied by whirling dervishes, to name but a handful.

However, in the end, these dazzling visuals overwhelm everything else, which is a shame because the movie's heart and soul -- the relationship between Roy and Alexandria -- truly is touching and enjoyable. The movie, despite the obvious amount of talent and visual splendor on display, ends up feeling fairly manufactured. It feels less like a film, and more like a showreel or promo piece for all of the really cool visual tricks, layouts, and arrangements that Tarsem can pull off.

Throughout the film, I felt like Tarsem was trying to get my attention, to get me to notice this really alluring costume, or the angle at which he shot this stunning castle wall, or how he was able to seamlessly transition from the shot of a pinned butterfly to a deserted butterfly-shaped island. Simply put, The Fall ends up drowning in its own excesses, constantly trying way too hard to wow the viewer and sweep them off into an imaginative, whimsical tale of heroes, bandits, and princesses in such an obvious manner that it ends up feeling rather ingratiating.

There's no denying that the film -- which was shot in 23 countries and has thousands of cast members -- is a staggering technical achievement, and that Tarsem has an eye for shooting really, really beautiful film. So if you go into The Fall just looking for fine eye candy, eye candy that falls somewhere between Terry Gilliam, Ron Fricke's Baraka, and a National Geographic special, I don’t see how you can be disappointed. But in the end, it just feels hollow and empty. Even Alexandria, with her considerable charm, and Roy, with his considerable pathos and affability, can't save the film from bogging down and ending on an emotional note that feels extremely cloying and, again, manufactured.

[X.]

Said it before, and I'll say it again - those monkeys at DIFF lost one of the best fest directors and programmers on the planet! Noah Cowan is responsible for bringing "The Fall" to the Toronto Film Fest, and this is what he has to say about the film:

The Fall (2006)

Director: Tarsem Singh
Executive Producer: Ajit Singh, Tommy Turtle
Producer: Tarsem Singh
Screenplay: Dan Gilroy, Nico Soultanakis, Tarsem, based on the film Yo Ho Ho by Zaco Heskija
Cinematographer: Colin Watkinson
Editor: Robert Duffy
Production Designer: Ged Clarke
Music: Krishna Levy
Principal Cast: Lee Pace, Catinca Untaru, Justine Waddell, Daniel Caltagirone, Leo Bill

This unclassifiable work from advertising and music video superstar Tarsem is easily the most visually innovative film in recent memory. He has created two hours of astonishing images with colour palettes that literally dazzle the viewer with their complexity.

Such an eye-popping undertaking requires a grandly epic story to match – and this one goes big. We start in Hollywood in the twenties: Roy Walker (Lee Pace), a stunt man, has just hurt himself terribly while trying to mount a horse on a railroad bridge. Convalescing in a beautiful, austere old hospital, he learns that he may lose the use of his legs. A respite from his deep depression comes in the form of a little girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), an immigrant from Eastern Europe who has broken her arm picking apples. In her, Roy sees an escape. They make a deal: he will tell her the most fantastic story imaginable and she will steal morphine from the hospital pharmacy for him, just in case he cannot take it anymore.

So begins a most extraordinary tale featuring five heroes, each from a different corner of the globe, all out to avenge the wrongs wrought by a powerful aristocrat. Fiercely elaborate and multi-layered, it speaks to lessons learned from war and revenge that are bracingly current.

The Fall was filmed in twenty-three different countries and features a cast of thousands. Fantastical creations derive almost entirely from Tarsem’s incredible eye for locations and visual effects. In a sense, the film is as much about cinema and its possibilities – reinforced by a heartbreaking montage of classic silent film stunts at the movie’s end – as anything else.

Because of the film’s four-year shooting schedule and constant need for anonymity in remote locations, the actors are not well known. That makes the performance of Pace as the stuntman – and “Black Bandit” in the fantasy sequences – all the more wonderful: he is captivating in two very different roles. So too is wee Untaru as the girl, her insouciance and openness to danger reminiscent, oddly, of Victoire Thivisol in Jacques Doillon’s Ponette.

This is the power of cinema at its grandest and most expansive. Awe awaits.

[kaytee]

I kinda liked The Cell too, The Fall sounds very interesting, but 4 years in the making is a long time. Lets hope that we get to see it someday.

[shariqq]

The Cell was fantastic. I hope they show The Fall at DIFF this year.

[kaytee]

Y do I get the feeling tht we 4 (Shariq, ak, Animatedude, Kaytee) and occasionally Sandeep are the only ones who have nothing to do but post comments.

Where are the others - Whats keeping you so busy - Work, Sex, Play?

Captain, Madali, Oddball, Fizz to name a few?

[X.]

No one wants to take "The Fall," a film Tarsem Singh made on his own terms

TARSEM SINGH has made a lucrative living for 17 years as a sought-after director of commercials, videos and the creepy 2000 horror hit, "The Cell." As he told me, more in awe than in boast, he once made more money in one day shooting a commercial than his father did in 30 years as an aircraft engineer in India.

And what did Tarsem do with most of that dough? Breaking the cardinal mantra of Hollywood, he spent it making a movie called "The Fall."

Shot in 24 countries over a period of nearly four years, the film is a dazzling visual fantasy as well as a meditation on the art of storytelling, seen through the eyes of a young girl and a bedridden stuntman who spins yarns about five exotic brigands roaming the world on the hunt for treasure. David Fincher, who has a "presented by" credit on the film along with Spike Jonze, describes the film as "what would've happened if Andrei Tarkovsky had made 'The Wizard of Oz.' "

After emptying his pockets, Tarsem — who goes only by his first name — has just one problem. He can't get anyone to release the movie.

Nearly 10 months after it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival, "The Fall" remains unsold, hurt by a largely negative critical reception at the festival. Even though the film has found admirers in Europe, potential studio buyers have all raised the same nagging question — exactly who is the audience for this picture?

Fair question. For all its style and ambition, "The Fall" — which screens Saturday at 9 p.m. in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum as part of the L.A. Film Festival's Secret Screening series — is exactly the kind of film that is overlooked in an era in which marketability trumps originality. Though the story revolves around a spirited young girl — played by Catinca Untaru, a 6-year-old from Romania who had never acted before — it is too intense for young kids, yet too self-consciously artsy for mainstream audiences. In many ways it's a throwback to the "Raging Bulls" era of filmmaking, when directors pursued personal visions with such pictures as Nicholas Roeg's "Performance" or Francis Ford Coppola's "One From the Heart."

"This is an obsession I wish I hadn't had," Tarsem explained during a recent stay in Los Angeles. "It was just something I needed to exorcise. You have to make your personal films when you're still young. I knew if I didn't do it now, it would never happen."

Although the 46-year-old filmmaker is represented by CAA, which specializes in finding financing for its talents' projects, he insisted on spending his own money, eager to have total creative freedom. "Tarsem wasn't willing to accept the terms of what the money people wanted," says Fincher, a longtime friend. "He has a unique vision of the world as his back lot and he didn't want to compromise that in any way."

Tarsem also worried that a financier might not grasp his unorthodox artistic process. In fact, the most fascinating part of the story behind "The Fall" involves the filmmaker's eccentric creative choices and work habits. He never, for example, had a finished script for all the scenes involving his exotic brigands. And although he could have had any number of stars — one of his big fans is Brad Pitt, who recently shot a Japanese commercial with him — the only actor Tarsem wanted for the lead role was Lee Pace, an unknown whom he'd seen playing a transgender night club performer in a cable TV movie.

The director did the first 12 weeks of filming at an asylum in South Africa that stood in for a circa-1920 hospital in Los Angeles, where Pace's injured stuntman character was convalescing. Convinced that Pace could give an effective performance only if everyone on the shoot thought he was actually paralyzed, Tarsem had the actor spend all his time on the set in a wheelchair or in bed. He says the only person beside himself who knew the actor could walk was a male nurse who wheeled him away for bathroom breaks.

"I wanted people to really think he was crippled," Tarsem explained over lunch the other day. "On the last day of shooting, the actor told the crew, 'I have something to say,' and he stood up and told everyone he could walk. Some people laughed, some people cried, some people were angry. But it was necessary for the movie."

After he finished the hospital sequences, Tarsem had a wrap party and then began plotting out the various adventure scenes for the film, using his commercial jobs as a launching pad. He spends most of his time traveling the globe, shooting commercials. (Last week, for example, he was in Morocco, India, England and Germany.) So whenever he had a job in a faraway spot, he would finish the commercial, keep his camera crew behind and summon the actors for his film.

After he shot a Coke commercial on the Butterfly Reef in Fiji, Tarsem flew the actors in for two days of filming. He did the same thing in Namibia. After he shot a Mountain Dew ad there, he used the country's sand dunes for a scene in which his characters were lost in the desert. Other scenes were set in remote parts of the Himalayas, the high desert of Rajasthan and the Andaman Islands near Sumatra, where he filmed the actors astride elephants swimming in the ocean, an image he'd first used in a Coke commercial.

Tarsem completed the film last year, but his luck ran out when he took the picture to Toronto. He especially wanted Roger Ebert, who'd been a fan of "The Cell," to see the picture. But the critic fell ill and couldn't cover the festival. The critics who did see the film were not kind. Variety's Dennis Harvey wrote a scathing pan, calling the film "an overlong whimsy" that was "basically a coffee-table book of striking travelogue images masquerading as warm-hearted period drama and fantasy."

Bad news travels fast. "It was terrible," Tarsem recalls. "We had all these [sales] appointments set up and after the reviews came out, everyone canceled."

Over time, a number of acquisition executives have caught up with the film and come away impressed. But without rave reviews, they believe it would be a tough sell. Several execs I spoke to theorized that Tarsem's success as a commercial director worked against the film, saying it would've received a warmer festival reception if it had been made by a struggling Third World filmmaker instead of a chic director best known for soft-drink ads and R.E.M. videos.

"If the film were in a foreign language, it would probably would have sold right away," says Think Films chief Mark Urman, an admirer of the movie. "But the film speaks to the mixed blessing of total independence. It might never have been made inside the system, but being made outside the system created a whole new set of problems, since there wasn't anyone around worrying about whether the filmmaker found a way to give pleasure to many people instead of just himself."

Tarsem's supporters scoff at the idea that a film buyer always has to know who the audience is that will embrace a film. As Fincher put it: "Who knew who the audience was for 'Pan's Labyrinth'? People are much more sophisticated about taking in visual information today. I'm not convinced that everyone has to have all their food pre-chewed for them."

Fincher makes a good point. There is something magical about a movie like "The Fall" that transcends cold-eyed marketing calculations. It has its flaws, but it has something too many films today lack — a sense of wonder about the possibilities of the medium.

Nonetheless, it remains unsold. Tarsem insists he has no regrets about the millions he may never see again. "It's like the old cliché, 'Easy come, easy go.' " he says, noting that with two homes and an Aston-Martin, he's not exactly starving. "Money makes accountants happy. But I didn't want to end up an old guy, sitting around talking about the movie I never got to make."

He sighs. "I just wish I could get more people to see it."

[kaytee]

Well maybe after Pushing Daisies being a hit, The Fall might get a release considering it stars Lee Pace.

[X.]

If it ever comes out, it will play in LA. And I will post a report.

That's such a wicked little poster.

[X.]

If it ever comes out, it will play in LA. And I will post a report.

I've just learnt that "The Fall" is being distributed in very very limited release this March/April.

Meanwhile, here's the downloadable version of the beautiful trailer. (Apparently, Tarsem finally got Ebert to see it because there's a quote from him on the screen; along with 'presented by' credits for David Fincher and Spike Jonze.)

[shariqq]

Direct link to download (61.6 MB)

[X.]

My cinematography teacher knows Tarsem. He says the reason why the film took so long to release (as in distribute) was not because it is a difficult film, but because Tarsem funded it with his own money. In Hollywood where production companies and studios rule with an iron fist, this can be a very dangerous thing. They wanted to make an example out of him.

[kaytee]

That trailer is soo wow...Visually brilliant, I dont know how this guy makes his movies they look like they are out of story books.

[shariqq]

Ebert has reviewed! And what a great review.

Tarsem's "The Fall" is a mad folly, an extravagant visual orgy, a free-fall from reality into uncharted realms. Surely it is one of the wildest indulgences a director has ever granted himself. Tarsem, for two decades a leading director of music videos and TV commercials, spent millions of his own money to finance "The Fall," filmed it for four years in 28 countries and has made a movie that you might want to see for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it.

"The Fall" is so audacious that when Variety calls it a "vanity project," you can only admire the man vain enough to make it. It tells a simple story with vast romantic images so stunning I had to check twice, three times, to be sure the film actually claims to have absolutely no computer-generated imagery. None? What about the Labyrinth of Despair, with no exit? The intersecting walls of zig-zagging staircases? The man who emerges from the burning tree? Perhaps the key words are "computer-generated." Perhaps some of the images are created by more traditional kinds of special effects.

The story framework for the imagery is straightforward. In Los Angeles, circa 1915, a silent movie stunt man has his legs paralyzed while performing a reckless stunt. He convalesces in a half-deserted hospital, its corridors of cream and lime stretching from ward to ward of mostly empty beds, their pillows and sheets awaiting the harvest of World War I. The stunt man is Roy (Lee Pace), pleasant in appearance, confiding in speech, happy to make a new friend of a little girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru).

Roy tells a story to Alexandria, involving adventurers who change appearance as quickly as a child's imagination can do its work. We see the process. He tells her of an "Indian" who has a wigwam and a squaw. She does not know these words, and envisions an Indian from a land of palaces, turbans and swamis. The verbal story is input from Roy; the visual story is output from Alexandria.

The story involves Roy (playing the Black Bandit) and his friends: a bomb-throwing Italian anarchist, an escaped African slave, an Indian (from India), and Charles Darwin and his pet monkey, Otis. Their sworn enemy, Governor Odious, has stranded them on a desert island, but they come ashore (riding swimming elephants, of course) and wage war on him.

Roy draws out the story for a personal motive; after Alexandria brings him some communion wafers from the hospital chapel, he persuades her to steal some morphine tablets from the dispensary. Paralyzed and having lost his great love (she is the Princess in his story), he hopes to kill himself. There is a wonderful scene of the little girl trying to draw him back to life.

Either you are drawn into the world of this movie or you are not. It is preposterous, of course, but I vote with Werner Herzog, who says if we do not find new images, we will perish. Here a line of bowmen shoot hundreds of arrows into the air. So many of them fall into the back of the escaped slave that he falls backward and the weight of his body is supported by them, as on a bed of nails with dozens of foot-long arrows. There is scene of the monkey Otis chasing a butterfly through impossible architecture.

At this point in reviews of movies like "The Fall" (not that there are any), I usually announce that I have accomplished my work. I have described what the movie does, how it looks while it is doing it, and what the director has achieved. Well, what has he achieved? "The Fall" is beautiful for its own sake. And there is the sweet charm of the young Romanian actress Catinca Untaru, who may have been dubbed for all I know, but speaks with the innocence of childhood, working her way through tangles of words. She regards with equal wonder the reality she lives in, and the fantasy she pretends to. It is her imagination that creates the images of Roy's story, and they have a purity and power beyond all calculation. Roy is her perfect storyteller, she is his perfect listener, and together they build a world.

Ebert notes: The movie's R rating should not dissuade bright teenagers from this celebration of the imagination.

[theoddball]

"The Fall" is so audacious that when Variety calls it a "vanity project," you can only admire the man vain enough to make it.

What a great line.

[kaytee]

Ebert has gone ga ga over this movie, check out his interview with Tarsem Singh Dhabdwar on http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080603/PEOPLE/868926055