Hollywood Reporter
by John DeFore
September 12, 2006
TORONTO -- If any doubt remains about Tarsem Singh's interest in narrative for its own sake, "The Fall" should put it to rest: The advertising and music video vet wants nothing more from a plot than an excuse to string together luscious images.
Without the star power and genre appeal of his previous film, "The Cell," "The Fall" will be handicapped at the box office. What it does have going for it in commercial terms -- whimsy and an adorable little girl playing the lead -- are offset by Singh's occasional use of unsettlingly graphic gore.
Using sickbed storytelling as a frame for fantasy a la "The Princess Bride," "The Fall" begins in a 1920s Los Angeles hospital, where young Alexandria, daughter of immigrant orange pickers, is recovering from a broken arm. She befriends Roy, a movie stuntman who has been maimed on set and lost his gal to boot. Roy begins spinning a long yarn for Alexandria, hoping to gain her trust so that she'll fetch him enough morphine to kill himself.
The story, as it unfolds in the girl's mind's eye, stars a quartet of heroes out to kill an evil emperor. Clothed by designer Eiko Ishioka (how is it that she has not made more movies?), each member of the team is a bit wilder than Roy's description. Charles Darwin, for instance, wears an enormous coat of red, black, and white fur.
For a few scenes, considerable charm comes from the way Alexandria misunderstands what she hears, colors it with her own experience, and updates it as she gets new information. While Roy is imagining a Native American when he describes one member of the group as an Indian, she envisions a mysterious warrior from India; a vast desert has lush gardens just over the hill when Roy makes a reference to grass.
This is charming, brain teasing, and even holds some promise as a catalyst for examining how we ourselves fill in the gaps of stories we hear. But Tarsem and his screenwriting collaborators aren't able to come up with enough interesting justifications for their sudden shifts, and soon the shape-shifting yarn just feels like lazy storytelling.
Whatever its narrative merits, the mutating tale is a magic tool for Tarsem, letting him hop around the world to use desert dunes, forgotten temples, and vast ruins as settings for his action. If he wants to see what a flaming carriage looks like in an ocean of sand, or to watch an elephant swim, he just writes a couple of lines of dialogue. Visually, the result is enthralling; technically, it must have been hell to make; critically, there's no way to discredit it.
But having a story whose characters and motivations shift so arbitrarily means that viewers have no stake in it emotionally. Those who are so inclined will let their minds wander, asking, "Haven't I seen that image somewhere?" and "Are the Quay Brothers going to sue over the way that hallucination sequence apes their work?"
Others will walk out mildly dissatisfied, but happy that someone was able to bring such astounding images to the big screen. Until Tarsem's advertising clients start to commission full-blown, huge-budget ads for the cinema, a half-baked fairy tale will have to do.
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