A stuntman galloping along a viaduct topples hundreds of feet into the water below, bringing his horse down with him. A young girl takes a tumble picking oranges in her family’s grove, landing on her arm in the process. And in a gloriously-saturated 1910s Los Angeles, the two of them end up at the same hospital.
“The Fall,” directed by Tarsem Singh — known mononymously as Tarsem — chronicles the growing friendship between this unlikely pair, and a grand, Homeric yarn parallelling their real lives that the man spins for the girl in daily storytime sessions. The film, which achieved almost immediate cult-classic status following its 2006 premiere at Toronto International Film Festival, is stunning, touching and tragic all at once. It’s also been notoriously difficult to access.
After its festival premiere, “The Fall” received an extremely limited theatrical release, as well as a one-run printing of DVDs. In the years that followed, its stints on streaming services were short-lived. Unless you caught it during these periods, happened upon its DVD in a shop or library or somehow got a hold of a pirated copy, there was just no seeing “The Fall.” Until last year, that is.
Officially marked by its premiere at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival, indie distributor-streamer Mubi worked with Tarsem to create a 4K remaster of his film. “The Fall” then screened theatrically worldwide, and now lives on Mubi’s streaming platform. There are perhaps an unknowable amount of films lost to time, given that archiving is not a universal or indelible practice. “The Fall” could have easily met a similar fate. But, and possibly due to its lead actor, avid fans, co-signs from directors David Fincher and Spike Jonze and Tarsem’s own presence in the entertainment industry (he’s directed a few films in recent years, including 2012’s “Mirror Mirror” and 2023’s “Dear Jassi,” music videos for R.E.M. and Lady Gaga and numerous video commercials) that “The Fall” has been preserved.
Simply put, “The Fall” is a story within a story. Alexandria (Catinca Untaru, in one of her only film roles) is a spirited young girl with a broken arm, getting utterly bored in the children’s ward of a hospital. She’s friends with Nurse Evelyn (Justine Waddell) and seemingly everyone around her, from elderly patients to ice delivery men to priests — all going out of their way to entertain her whims. Her antsiness amid the Los Angeles heat is finally resolved when a note she throws out of a window to Evelyn flies into another window, literally landing in Roy’s (a gorgeously morose Lee Pace) lap. Roy regales Alexandria with a fable of Alexander the Great (the girl’s namesake, as Roy explains), his descriptions coming to life on screen. This story preludes an original one of epic proportions, and soon Roy has Alexandria returning daily to hear the next bit of his tale of morally-righteous bandits who’ve all been slighted by the fictional Governor Odious.
Films revolving around child characters can be make-or-break, depending on the young actor’s abilities. Tarsem knew this, which is why as soon as he found his Alexandria in the 6-year-old Untaru, he dropped everything to get his film made. Untaru and Pace’s hospital scenes were chronologically filmed over four months, during which Tarsem and Pace worked to get as many natural reactions out of Untaru as possible. Tarsem would frequently let the camera run, capturing whatever Untaru shared, and Pace, whose character is paralyzed waist-down, convinced everyone from his young co-star to the camera operators that he was actually bedridden.
This process undeniably impacted the final film, which is emotionally dependent on the success of the hospital sequences. It also resulted in piercing scenes such as when Alexandria offers Roy a piece of Eucharist from the chapel, not knowing its significance. He asks if she’s trying to save his soul, amusement and wonder flickering across Pace’s face. But Alexandria merely smiles, asking “what?” repeatedly in response.
Throughout “The Fall,” the ease with which Untaru commands the screen and bewitches characters and audience both, cannot be overstated. Her delight is in turn met by Pace radiating soulful pain. Still early in his career at this point, there’s a boyish charm to his performance that’s beautifully contrasted with his own ability to prove depth with just the lift of his eyebrow or lilt of his voice.
Alexandria’s vivaciousness despite the hardships she’s faced are displayed in rebuttal to Roy’s defeatism; as the film progresses, it becomes clear that Roy is deeply depressed, having lost both his job and his girlfriend in one fell swoop (his injury). The emotional turmoil that Roy experiences bleeds into the story he tells Alexandria, as well. As he loses faith in himself and the world around him, he begins killing off characters, much to Alexandria’s dismay. It’s only after she breaks through his ennui that he turns his story around. Alexandria might not save Roy with the Eucharist she gives him, but one can argue that she does so by simply being herself.
The grounded emotions of the hospital scenes in “The Fall” are strikingly juxtaposed with the grandeur of Roy’s tale. Shot over four years and across 24 countries (including India, Italy, Romania, Brazil, Egypt and Cambodia), this narrative breadth is heightened by Tarsem and cinematographer Colin Watkinson’s eyes for detail, and embrace of dramatics. Costumes are billowing and bright, extreme wide shots punctuate the vastness of the story and its setting, geometric architecture carries visual symbolism and whether we are in an ancient palace or the one-building hospital, motivated lighting and shadows create entrancing scenes of chiaroscuro.
The most visually represented region in “The Fall” is India, Tarsem’s home country; locations include Jaipur’s Jantar Mantar observatory, Jodhpur (the blue city) and the Taj Lake Palace in Udaipur. One of the main bandits is Indian, and late in the film, a character dies after being shot by dozens of arrows then falls onto his back, evoking imagery of ascetic Hindu practitioners sleeping on beds of nails as part of their meditation. Indian culture and imagery is inextricable from “The Fall,” yet at no point does the film establish itself as telling an Indian story. Instead, and more profoundly for it, Tarsem’s unabashed yet underlying portrayal of his heritage suggests that this is perhaps just how he perceives the worlds he builds.
In every sense, “The Fall” is a labor of love. Beyond its nearly five years of production, the idea was percolating for over two decades, and is technically an adaptation of the 1981 Bulgarian film “Yo Ho Ho.” (Story beats unite the two works, but Tarsem’s is undeniably his, elevating the older film to previously unseen heights.) Ultimately, though, Tarsem’s version boils down to the idea that started it all: a want to “tell a story using a person’s body language,” exploring the concept that how a story is told and who does the telling impacts its message. Roy’s life colors his story but Alexandria changes Roy, whose narrative, in turn, evolves. And almost anyone who’s seen “The Fall” can attest that in some way, its story has affected them, as well.