The Fall review

 Number 404 on the top 1000 films of all time is the adventure-fantasy film 'The Fall.'

In 1915 Los Angeles, stunt man Roy Walker (Lee Pace) is hospitalised after a stunt gone wrong. In hospital, he forms an unlikely friendship with fellow patient, eight-year-old Romanian girl Alexandria  (Catinca Untaru) who is recovering from a broken arm. He entertains her with a wild and fantasy tale about a rag-tag group of rebels to team up to kill a common enemy, but he has an agenda of his own. 

Although I understand respect director Tarsem's vision, The Fall didn't land for me. This was because of the story-within-a story format. Other films such as the Chinese Wuxia Hero also employ this format, but they only work if the framing story is as interesting as the secondary story.

This was not the case for the Fall, where the secondary story was infinitely more interesting than the framing story of Roy and Alexandria in the hospital. Yes, their relationship was cute and touching, but it didn't quite resonate for me.

*spoilers*

Roy has a dark secret. In exchange for entertaining Alexandria with these stories, he asks her to steal morphine for him. Ostensibly, this is to help him sleep, but he actually intends to commit suicide. His beloved has left him for the actor he was doubling for. Now he now longer wants to live. This was suitably tragic with Pace and Catinca giving good performances, but this framing story lacked the same forward momentum of the supporting story.

It also lacked the same, great visual style. Our B-story sees a range of quirky characters including a masked bandit, a silent Indian warrior, an ex-slave, an Italian explosives expert and Charles Darwin. They all team up to take revenge on a governor who has wronged them all. The fantasy land they inhabited was marked by bold colours and a distinct look - similar to the Chinese Hero film.

I do think this was just a case of a film not working for me, Obviously, The Fall is held in high regard, the IMDB fan base voted it as the 405th best film for a reason, but alas I was not one of those fans.