The Fall (2006) Review

Tarsem Singh, who prefers just Tarsem, previously made a name for himself in 2000 with his polarizing feature film debut The Cell. It seems that between then and now he has been making numerous commercials and music videos in an effort to finance his dream picture, The Fall. And “dream” couldn’t be a more apt adjective to describe his latest film. Boasting incredible cinematography, majestic sets and costumes, and shot in 28 locations all over the world, The Fall is undoubtedly a visual feast and the epitome of “dream”-like.

The basic plot concerns a young girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) who is staying in a hospital in Los Angeles after a nasty fall in an orange grove has delivered her a broken arm. Exploring the hospital grounds, she soon comes across a stuntman named Roy (Lee Pace) holed up in a room after a fall of his own has left him with a pair of broken legs. Though at first wary of Roy, Alexandria quickly warms to his charm and he begins to tell her an epic yarn about five colorful bandits on an Odyssean quest to kill the evil governor who has wronged them.

The story Roy tells is brought to life with wonderful, and often humorous, live-action sequences in which patients and staff from the hospital appear as veiled variations of themselves. The story progresses and becomes increasingly fantastic, aided in part by Roy’s agitated state and in part by Alexandria’s imaginative contributions. What began as a simple fable is soon a collaboration, and sometimes a battle, between the two to discover the fates of the characters and the world that they have created. If The Fall sometimes resembles a fairy tale, this is a Brothers Grimm tale rather than a Disney one - Roy is not interested in happy endings.

Also like a fairy tale, the story’s moral and its conclusion are somewhat rudimentary, and some critics claim that this unoriginality devalues the film as a whole. Instead, I found that the picture’s simple nature gave it a visceral sort of power. Hidden within the whimsy and beauty we confront sadness, paranoia and a very human struggle to find meaning - universal sentiments that transcend any originality the plot might lack.

The other star of the show, after the vast imaginativeness of the images on display, is the persistent appeal of the girl Alexandria. Played by first-time actor Catinca Untaru, she is so sweet and so real that you can’t help being drawn in by her performance. It is not the saccharine, well-rehearsed cuteness that we are used to with say, someone like Dakota Fanning, but reflects the effortless way in which a child is naturally cute and amusing. So effortless in fact, that at first I was sure that her lines were improvised. Further research reveals that much of the actor’s verisimilitude of innocence derives from the fact that she did not know how to speak English at all. She learned her lines by heart. You wouldn’t know it though, as she stutters, smiles and rubs her nose as she speaks, as if the camera isn’t there, gracefully endearing herself.

Tarsem has created an eccentric and extravagant world, not unlike one from the imagination of Terry Gilliam or maybe Julie Taymor, where suspension of disbelief is created through an unrelenting richness in detail. And as with those indulgent directors, I suspect either you buy into Tarsem’s fantasy or you don’t. But if you manage to let your imagination go, don’t be surprised to find yourself spellbound by the world of The Fall.

One of the best films I’ve seen this year.

Shotgun Stories (2007) Review

Hoo-Boy, sorry about the break. I was on a sort of summer vacation and I didn't meant to neglect you all. Here's a new movie!



I became interested in Jeff Nichol’s Shotgun Stories when I came across an article that mentioned that the film and its style were similar in many ways to the work of David Gordon Green, one of my favorite American directors. Green’s films, which include the Criterion-rewarded George Washington and art-house favorite All The Real Girls, have often been placed in the “Southern Gothic” sub-genre of films and, living most of my adult life in a city, these stories of small towns and simple people hold a certain kind of poetry for me. What I didn’t know was that Green was more than just a creative influence on Nichols, he was a producer on the film. When his name came up as the credits rolled, I let out a thunderous “Ooohhhhhh” and it’s because his influence is heavily felt. Shotgun Stories is a haunting film that effectively explores deep feelings of neglect and revenge.

The story concerns two groups of brothers, both offspring of the same man, in a small town in Arkansas. The patriarch of both families sired first Son, Kid and Boy, so-named because the father was a violent alcoholic who left the boys nameless and alone with their mother, out of selfishness and uncaring. Some time later he renounced all his sins, became a devout Christian, and sired four more boys with a new mother. But he never made things right by his first family. The boys’ mother blaming them for their father’s departure, were taught to hate him and his new family with a vengeance.

This unspoken hatred between new and old families comes to a boil at the funeral for the father, and as a feud escalates, it becomes more and more likely that the memory of this man will be the end of both families.

Normally I would talk first about the film’s successes, before discussing what its failures are, but I found that Shotgun Stories' quirks are its biggest successes. There is very little exposition in the dialogue, which brings out a realness in the characters that is striking, but the film has a way of bleeding out information about characters little by little, and I found myself struggling to understand these people and their intentions. For example, we get to the conflict of the film, the feud, well before we understand the men's lives and backstories.

The gradual revealing of characters' intentions makes them fall victim to a woodenness for the first half of the film, almost as actors in a play. Overwhelmed by the meager background and subtle detail, there are points when we are treated to a few little "slice of life" moments that ring so true and real that I found a smile spreading over my face. But the film’s characters regard these moments as they do everything else in the film: with expressions devoid of emotion. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe this man who died, maybe this whole town, have made Son, Boy and Kid apathetic about everything. The payoff ended up working for me, but its a style that I could see being a turn-off for those with less patience for languid pacing.

Aside from a very nice score and wonderful cinematography of the South, I wanted to make a special mention of Michael Shannon, who I last saw in a fascinating portrait of mental un-health in Bug. In Shotgun Stories he gives a performance as the mumbling, but stoic Son, the oldest of the feuding Hayes brothers. I’m not sure of his range in the long run, (his character in Bug was quite similar,) but it’s a character that manages to just sweat sadness from every pore.

Whether or not you share my feelings on the film’s rewards, it is no doubt a shame that the studios have overlooked the film for so long; the principal photography for Shotgun Stories was done in 2004, and the film was in some sort of studio limbo until late last year. Nichols says in his artist’s statement that his intention was to show that “there is no victory in revenge,” and to counteract the effects of a society that lionizes such acts. While I’m not convinced it’s as unfamiliar territory as Nichols thinks, the real-life tragedy of revenge is painted compellingly in his debut feature.