Fall Off

Besides me loving my new drum kit, there's something else my friend FKL was right about lately. He suspected that while he loved the movie The Fall, I probably wouldn't. I would have trusted that "recommendation," but I'd already dropped the movie into my Netflix queue after his enthusiastic response, and I didn't see him try to steer me clear until it was already on the way to my door.

Anyway, The Fall is a movie made four years ago (but only actually released two years ago) about a 1920s era stuntman who injures himself on a film. Convalescing in a hospital and desperate for morphine to dull his pain, he befriends a young foreign girl also in the hospital, and starts telling her an elaborate made up story to win her trust (which he'll then parlay into having her steal his drugs from the hospital supply).

But what it's really about is the outrageous story he weaves for this little girl. We see it all unfold on screen in what FKL fairly described as a Terry Gilliam sort of way. And the story gets modified as we go, based on suggestions from the little girl, or inconsistencies introduced by the stuntman storyteller. The events we're watching sometimes shift mid-scene.

The first thing you see when the credits roll is that the film was directed by Tarsem (Singh). Had I known this, I never would have watched it at all. This is the director who defined "style over substance" in his very beautiful, very self-indulgent film, The Cell. This movie is at least the equal of The Cell in spectacle and in decadence. It's a series of paintings brought to life. And though I can't claim it has no narrative, it wasn't one that really engaged me. After all, a fraction of the effort that was put into visuals was put into story.

But besides those luscious visuals, there are a couple more good aspects to the film -- the performances of the two main actors. The stuntman is played by Lee Pace, star of the brilliant-but-canceled Pushing Daisies. He manipulates while being sympathetic, conveys sorrow and pain, and even plays one of the characters in the story he's telling too. Then there's the young girl, an unknown named Catinca Untaru. In the last half hour in particular, she just breaks your heart with a very real, very wrenching performance.

Still, I lost patience for the "style over substance" long before it got to the meat in that final act. Overall, I'd rank the film a D+. But this is a film where your mileage could definitely vary. If you're one to be drawn into the spectacle of a film, this movie has it in spades.