If contemporary kids’ movies are to be believed, children’s
imaginations are glib, computer-generated videogame-scapes, full of
skateboarding giraffes and wisecracking sea turtles. Alongside
Guillermo del Toro’s recent Pan’s Labyrinth, Tarsem Singh’s
The Fall refuses to countenance this candy-coated version of a
child’s brain—taking us instead to a darker and far more
interesting place.
The Fall is set in southern California in 1915, in an idyllic
hospital where the young Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) is recovering from
a tumble from a tree. The friendly little girl takes up with the
paralyzed Roy (Lee Pace), an injured stuntman with an inconvenient
morphine addiction. The two become fast friends, and Alexandria spends
hours curled up on Roy’s hospital bed, a curtain pulled around them
both, as he tells her an epic story about a band of explorers in a
magical land.
Much of the film is set within this fantasy story: The opiate-addled
Roy provides the words, Alexandria’s imagination provides the visuals,
and together the two weave an outlandish swashbuckler about five
adventurers on a quest to kill an evil lord, with Roy and Alexandria’s
own lives informing the look and plot of the story. What looks like a
charming diversion, though, soon takes on more sinister undertones, as
Roy begins using the story as a ploy to convince Alexandria to steal
morphine for him from the hospital’s supply closet. Inevitably, the
relationship between the drug-addicted Roy and the emotionally
vulnerable little girl takes a turn for the horrific.
If the film is slow at times, Singh crams his film with enough
visual diversions that it’s always possible to just sit back and enjoy
the spectacle, much like his directorial debut, 2000’s gorgeously vapid
The Cell. Throw in the precocious, likeable Untaru, and the film
has some real charm—and when its emotional climax comes, it’s
shattering.