Falling Short (The Fall)

Tenyears ago I described Tarsem’s feature debut as a director, The Cell, as an example of an emergingcinema whose impressions were visual more than verbal and whose visuals wereachieved in part by quick montages of images. That Tarsem made his mark withthe R.E.M. video “Losing My Religion,” as well as sneaker and soft drink ads, was held against him by critics who resistedthe kinetic, jump cutting visual language of the MTV generation.

The10 years between The Cell andTarsem’s return to big screens, The Fall,has given me time to reconsider. I don’t think I was entirely wrong about thepotential of the MTV generation of filmmakers but I’m not sure that thepotential has often been met. The Fallis a case in point. At times visually dazzling, The Fall misses the mark because its promising story potential isinfuriatingly unfulfilled by a director who seems to prize idiosyncrasy overall else. Just being wiggy can work for a four-minute music video but not for atwo-hour movie.

Likethe opening leaf from a fairytale, TheFall starts with a title reading “Los Angeles Long Long Ago.” Sure enough,there is a child and a storyteller; the former is a five-year-old Romanian girlwhose English should be assisted by subtitles and the latter is a Hollywood stuntman. The time is the 1910s judging by theclanking motorcars and by the stuntman’s movie. The setting is a Roman Catholichospital, the denominational reference serving only to make the visualiconography more colorful. A hospital run by Methodists or atheists would be adull looking place by contrast.

Thegirl broke her arm while harvesting oranges from nearby groves with her familyand the stuntman broke his leg falling from a railroad bridge during thefilming of a Western melodrama. He tells her a rambling story complete withcliffhangers, sending her to the dispensary to sneak him morphine beforecontinuing his ad-libbed tale. The stuntman has a broken heart as well as abroken leg. The star of his movie has taken his girl, the movie’s co-star. Thestuntman’s will to live has weakened.

Thestory is where The Fall’s limitationsbecome painful. It’s plain stupid but worse still, dull and unengagingamishmash of intentionally ironic clich%uFFFDs (enclosed by 10-foot “quotationmarks”) about a band of eccentrically-garbed heroes seeking to overthrow thedastardly Governor Odious and rescue the damsel in distress. The onlystimulation is provided by the morphing backdrops and visuals, includingmud-caked aborigines in a choreographed dance, a tattoo mapping itself across ahuman body, a great hulking wagon whose wheels are turned by slaves on circulartreadmills, and architecture drawing from the Hagia Sophia, the Taj Mahal andM.C. Escher. Tarsem sometimes composes colors in horizontal strips like MarcRothko in motion.

Perhapsthe single best scene comes near the end when we finally see part of theflickering Western that led to the stuntman’s accident. It’s a brilliantrecreation on gritty black and white stock, accompanied by a solo violinistheightening the action with variations on Wagner.

Asin Dorothy’s dream from The Wizard of Oz,the stuntman’s story absorbs people and situations from the protagonists’reality. The Hollywood star that stole thestuntman’s girl is a dead ringer for Governor Odious. The mildly interestingtwist is the collaboration that develops between the storyteller and the littleRomanian girl, who like a typical Hollywoodaudience demands a happy ending. In this case, the ending could mean life ordeath for the teller, assuming that life follows art.