The Fall
No two people experience the same story the same way. A reader or listener can contribute just as much imagination as a storyteller. “The Fall,” a beguiling and ravishing movie from director Tarsem, celebrates the power of a listener to transform a tale. The storyteller is Roy, a recently paralyzed movie stuntman in a 1920s Los Angeles hospital; his audience is Alexandria, a six-year-old girl recovering from a broken arm. Lee Pace finds the charm, pathos and self-loathing in Roy, while as Alexandria, Romanian actress Catinca Untaru has the unself-conscious naturalism of the best child stars. Roy rivets the girl’s attention by making up an adventure involving five exiled bandits who seek revenge against a cruel despot. Alexandria fleshes it out and colors it in with her mind’s eye. And Tarsem finds ways to communicate visually her bountiful imagination. He shot “The Fall” over a four-year period in 18 countries, and he makes spectacular use of the Mughal forts and palaces that hover over the cities of his native India. I’ve visited many of these locations, and I can attest that Tarsem didn’t alter or dress them up in any way. They are so magnificently strange that they can support the wildest fantasy. “The Fall” evokes both “Pan’s Labyrinth,” with its imagined world that may or may not provide solace from an ugly reality, and “Days of Heaven,” with its early-20th Century setting and child hero with an incomplete understanding of adult motives. It doesn’t quite measure up to those two masterpieces, but it’s the most exciting movie I’ve seen this year.
LISTEN: The Fall