The Fall (2006)

The Fall (2006)

Dir. Tarsem Singh

Tarsem often favours style over substance. I'm sure I've criticised him for it in the past, but never in regards to The Fall. Take the time to understand its tiered structure and you'll discover that substance is very much there, indivisible from style, reliant on an obvious contrast between its two different states.

On the surface, the more traditional story being told is a frame that holds within it an additional, fantastical, allegorical story narrated by one character to another, not unlike Scheherazade in One Thousand and One Nights. The imaginations of both teller and recipient are given life, acted out like an elaborate and ornate play. The full picture can only be appreciated when you consider the frame and what it holds as one product.

To make life simpler for myself and to minimise confusion for a reader I'm going to refer to the main story as the 'reality' and the narrated story-within-the-story as 'fictional'.

The reality takes place in Los Angeles, 'long, long ago,’ which translates to the year 1915. Because the fictional story is constructed on the fly by main character Roy Walker (Lee Pace) from his hospital bed it's less structured than the reality. As a movie actor (his occupation in the film) he's more used to being a player in someone else's story, not a creator of his own.

His limited ability and lack of experience with writing dialogue carries though into the colourful fiction, and that's the reason the acting is bad during those times. The life the fictional players have is given to them by the teller. They're blank pages being written, sometimes badly, by a man who isn't a writer and is suffering from some crippling physical and emotional problems.

The other half of the equation is five-year-old Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), a resident at the same hospital as Roy. Alexandria is Romanian-born but she speaks some English and can understand most of what Roy tells her. The two individuals are from different backgrounds, are decades apart in age and experience, but are nevertheless able to find a commonality.

Catinca is young, so her understanding of her character is less nuanced than the adults have of theirs, but she has a beautiful naturalism that gives Alexandria a real warmth. When she smiles it seems like she's smiling for real, and when she fidgets it speaks volumes about her off-screen persona. Some folks will dislike the real world aspects of the performance, seeing them as an intrusion or a failing, but I see them as an invaluable strength. The 'young adult' child actors that Hollywood prefers would've been a horrible addition. Catinca is the perfect Alexandria.

The fantastical half of the film enabled Tarsem to stage some breathtaking scenes; every frame is a photographer's wet dream waiting to be paused and explored. Without the emotional support provided by the real world happenings the fiction would be the model definition of beautiful but empty, but when the two things are working in tandem both are strengthened.

The hospital scenes have their own kind of understated beauty, one that captures the essence of life happening outside the walls at a faster pace than it does within them. It's easy to imagine how time could fade and days could roll into weeks for the residents. My only nitpick was that it clearly wasn't Los Angeles. The lighting was much too sensual to be an American city.

As the film progresses the two stories grow more analogous. Even the listener becomes a part of it, influencing the direction and the connection it has to its more relatable counterpart.

Anyone who's ever attempted to write fiction, entertain an imaginative child or tell a campfire story will know that words have a way of becoming a commentary on their creator. Our role as viewer is to recognise that, get involved with the whole affair and, like Alexandria does (but to an even greater degree), become a part of it. If you achieve that, then the film transcends the style over substance criticism that I started out trying to address at the top of the page. The onus is on the viewer to understand. Tarsem did his part, and I sincerely doubt he'll be able to do it any more successfully in the future, because the type of story he needed is already here.