"Once upon a time," reads the caption in "The Fall", there was no movie industry in California, but there were orange trees, and stories; except the stories were contained in books, and sometimes the story required a human voice.
Set in the twenties, time is pertinent in "The Fall", as the storyteller weaves his elaborate tale to his young listener. The images generated by the narrator are painterly-looking for an intellectually-based reason, Roy(Lee Pace) grew up visiting museums, not movie houses. The hospital patient has been to a couple of films, but he doesn't know what the fuss is all about. The elaborate compositions in "The Fall" emanate from an art lover. The moving picture that illustrate his words and ideas are paintings come-to-life.
Late in "The Fall", the tone of Roy's story changes. Some would say, the thematic elements are unsuitable for Alexandria(Catinca Utaru, his captive audience. But remember, this is the nineteen-twenties; there was no such literature or film(once the ball started rolling) that catered(or is that, condescended) to children, no such thing as niche entertainment. A young girl like Alexandria read Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, not Nancy Drew mysteries, or Judy Blume. Early twentieth-century girls had their periods, too, but they didn't have to read about it.
To the movie buff, it should be clear that Tarsem, best known for R.E.M.'s artfully blasphemous "Losing My Religion" video, was inspired by David Fricke's "Baraka" and Spike Jonze's "Adaptation". His love affair with the Dziga Vertov-inspired, pan-cultural film about the world we live in, can even be glimpsed in his video for Deep Forest("Sweet Lullaby"). It's not just the sheer amount of countries that this production touched ground on, "The Fall" actually lifts entire scenes from "Baraka", most pointedly, the scene, in which a shaman chants with his disciples. The influence of the Charlie Kaufman script that starred Nicholas Case and his doppleganger, thankfully, is less obvious. There's a good, sizable chunk of "The Fall" that seems bad, but purposely so, I think, just like the moment in "Adaptation", when Donald Kaufman(the hack that goes to the Robert McKee seminar) takes over the narration from his twin-brother Charlie. In "The Fall", the darker narrative is a reflection on Roy's fatalistic state-of-mind. The subtext, Roy's tragic personal life, is barely kept in check, if at all, when Alexandria asks Roy to pick up the story where he had last left off. The violence isn't senseless. There's a psychologically-based reason for each death, but their renderings, are gratuitous, on the verge of being repetitious. "The Fall" starts to feel like a never-ending story.
Set in the twenties, time is pertinent in "The Fall", as the storyteller weaves his elaborate tale to his young listener. The images generated by the narrator are painterly-looking for an intellectually-based reason, Roy(Lee Pace) grew up visiting museums, not movie houses. The hospital patient has been to a couple of films, but he doesn't know what the fuss is all about. The elaborate compositions in "The Fall" emanate from an art lover. The moving picture that illustrate his words and ideas are paintings come-to-life.
Late in "The Fall", the tone of Roy's story changes. Some would say, the thematic elements are unsuitable for Alexandria(Catinca Utaru, his captive audience. But remember, this is the nineteen-twenties; there was no such literature or film(once the ball started rolling) that catered(or is that, condescended) to children, no such thing as niche entertainment. A young girl like Alexandria read Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, not Nancy Drew mysteries, or Judy Blume. Early twentieth-century girls had their periods, too, but they didn't have to read about it.
To the movie buff, it should be clear that Tarsem, best known for R.E.M.'s artfully blasphemous "Losing My Religion" video, was inspired by David Fricke's "Baraka" and Spike Jonze's "Adaptation". His love affair with the Dziga Vertov-inspired, pan-cultural film about the world we live in, can even be glimpsed in his video for Deep Forest("Sweet Lullaby"). It's not just the sheer amount of countries that this production touched ground on, "The Fall" actually lifts entire scenes from "Baraka", most pointedly, the scene, in which a shaman chants with his disciples. The influence of the Charlie Kaufman script that starred Nicholas Case and his doppleganger, thankfully, is less obvious. There's a good, sizable chunk of "The Fall" that seems bad, but purposely so, I think, just like the moment in "Adaptation", when Donald Kaufman(the hack that goes to the Robert McKee seminar) takes over the narration from his twin-brother Charlie. In "The Fall", the darker narrative is a reflection on Roy's fatalistic state-of-mind. The subtext, Roy's tragic personal life, is barely kept in check, if at all, when Alexandria asks Roy to pick up the story where he had last left off. The violence isn't senseless. There's a psychologically-based reason for each death, but their renderings, are gratuitous, on the verge of being repetitious. "The Fall" starts to feel like a never-ending story.