I rented The Fall this weekend and I think it’s my new favorite movie.
Has anyone here seen this? Apparently it came out this year, but I never saw ads for it or even heard about it until now.
The plot is simple – in a hospital in the 1920s, a wounded stuntman tells a little girl with a broken arm an elaborate fairy tale in order to get her to steal morphine for him – but the way that the real life scenes and the fairy tale are cut together, and the way that the little girl slowly insinuates herself into the fairy tale, make it fascinating.
The acting is excellent – I was most impressed with the actress (Catinca Untaru) who plays the little girl. She was probably around 6 years old when this was made, and there’s nothing at all precious or forced-cute about her. She was just fantastic, as was Lee Pace as the stuntman. Between his work here and in Soldier’s Girl (where he was completely convincing as a transgendered woman), I now feel that he’s actually wasted as one-note Ned the Piemaker in Pushing Daisies (and I’m speaking as a fan of the show). He has such a warmth to him, and he and the little girl had great chemistry.
And the visuals alone are worth your time, money, and effort: the movie was filmed in over a dozen locations all around the world, and the scenery, the colors, and the shot setups are incredibly gorgeous. (Tarsem Singh also directed The Cell and the music video for R.E.M.'s “Losing My Religion,” to give you an idea of the aesthetic of the film.)
(Also, if you’re reading this and thinking it would be great to show your children, just be warned that it gets pretty intensely dark toward the end, and it’s rated R for violence [although, to me, it’s not that graphic or gory].)
Yep. I started a thread about it. Search isn’t working for me at the moment so I can’t give you a link, but several other people saw it and liked it as well. It’s still my favorite movie of the year, by far. I really went dotty over it, saw it 9 times in the theater (and it was a theater I absolutely hated too, which was an indication of how much I adored this movie). Three of those viewings were on the last night it played. Call me crazy, for seeing the same movie 3 times in a row, but I knew I’d probably never get to see the movie again on film, on the big screen, so I went for it. I’m glad I did. Even though it’s on DVD and we have a large screen ceiling projection big screen, I’d go again to see it in the theater if it were ever brought back.
By the way, the phenomenal little girl, Catinca Untaru, has her own MySpace page and I’ve been in contact with her. Also worth looking at is the MySpace page of Andreea Tanasescu, the awesome talent agent who found Catinca and brought her to Tarsem’s attention.
Not that it will do any good, but a fan (not me) has a petition to get Catinca nominated for any film awards this season. I don’t think she’ll get awards attention, but stranger things have happened. The little girl in Ponette, then 4-year old Victoire Thivisol, very deservingly won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival. Victoire’s performance was a huge inspiration to Tarsem, who delayed his movie until he could find the perfect child to play Alexandra. He sure did find her. One of the reasons I saw the movie over and over was just to watch her performance. The thought of it still blows me away. Oh, and the movie was stunningly beautiful and funny too.
It had some incredible visuals and some touching moments but the storytelling - both the story at the hospital and the fantasy - just didn’t draw me in for some reason. It was like the stuntman tried to spin a great yarn but wasn’t very good at it so one of the main elements of the film was simply weak and the end of the fantasy was WTF. It had qualities that might have appealed more to a younger audience but it was too violent. Overall I was disappointed.
To me the fact that he wasn’t a very good storyteller was part of the charm, especially since Alexandra kept changing the direction of the story, finally inserting herself into the story he was telling.
Count me in! I really liked this movie. Since i’ve watched it, i have been listening to Beethoven’
Symphony No.7 lot. I have known the music from before, but not by who or what title. It fit in with the movie very well.
Augh, I’m jealous that you saw it in the theater. But I know how you felt – I’ve watched it three times so far this weekend, and I still have to watch it with both commentary tracks. It just gets its claws into you, you know? Watching it over again has revealed things I missed the first time, like the fact that Luigi getting injured in his foot mirrored what the stuntman in “real” life said about his false leg getting battered in the movies.
I agree that the non-fluency of the storytelling fits within the context of the movie – Roy was cobbling together the story out of bits of things he had learned in school in order to persuade Alexandria to get him morphine. He wasn’t supposed to be a master storyteller performing flawlessly. Along with Alexandria changing the story, I read an article (um…somewhere I can’t find now) that said that Catinca Untaru’s improvisations worked into the story and changed some of the plot (one example was that it was Catinca who read “morphine” as “m-o-r-p-h-i-n-3,” so the plot was changed to accommodate that).
The ending did change drastically in tone, but that fit with Roy’s state of mind and his plummet into despair, so it didn’t come out of nowhere. The grimness and violence also makes me wonder if the director didn’t deliberately cut the film to an R rating to keep small children away.
It’s funny that you mentioned Ponette, Equipoise, because the tone of the story’s end made me think precisely of that movie and that other young actress who had to cry and cry. (That’s the saddest movie I’ve ever seen, and I’m glad that girl won an award and got some kind of compensation for her suffering :))
I’ll take a look at Catinca’s MySpace page (my goodness, she’s grown fast) and look for the soundtrack.
Bumping this to say, I’ve seen claims that this movie uses no CGI whatsoever, but I watched it again last night (don’t judge me!) and counted at least four instances of obvious CGI.
(I feel like these should be spoilered, so…)
[spoiler]1. When Alexander the Great is standing in the middle of the ruins and trees, and the camera pans around him and shows that he is suddenly standing in the middle of the desert.
When the pinned butterfly in Darwin’s case becomes Butterfly Island.
Most obvious of all, when the tattoos appear on the Mystic’s body as he is being revived.
When the birds fly out of the Mystic’s mouth.
(Possibly) when the Indian and three of Odious’ soldiers plummet from climbing up the tower, because it would be too dangerous to have four people falling onto the same pile of boxes.[/spoiler]
Unless “no CGI” means “no CGI was used to enhance the colors of the locations” or something, I don’t see how the claim can be accurate.
Watching it over again has revealed things I missed the first time, like the fact that Luigi getting injured in his foot mirrored what the stuntman in “real” life said about his false leg getting battered in the movies.