The Fall Analysis

“The Fall” [2006] – A Tribute to the Power of Stories

Sometimes, you make an emotional bond with a film and dissect or interpret its vision in different ways, while a fellow movie-lover would pan it by using the most loathful words. Tarsem Singh’s visually exuberant movie, “The Fall” (2006) falls into that category. Many critics deemed it as a self-indulgent, vanity project; or as a preposterously intolerable, childish story. Does Tarsem have abundant directorial ego that drove the likes of Jodorowsky, Lynch or Gilliam, who all persistently came up with outlandishly inventive visuals? I would say yes. As a movie-lover, this so-called ‘directorial ego’ has always fascinated me (provided they are more inventive to conceal its inconsistencies).
Not just fallen physically, but they also have descended emotionally. It is said that for adults, it would take quite some time for broken bones to set in, than for children. The movie shows the statement is not just true for physical injuries, but also for emotional afflictions. The year is 1915 and Alexandria (Catinca Unaru), a five year old Romanian girl, has witnessed her share of broken things in life: she has a broken arm; her familial life is broken as ‘angry people’ have burned down her house, killing the father; and she could only talk in ‘broken’ English. But, then her fantastical, vivid imaginations know no boundary. Death & misery stays around her in the children ward of a Los Angeles hospital, but she always looks out of her window at the sun-drenched landscape, which is diffused with warm human beings. She loves her surrogate mother Nurse Evelyn (Justine Waddell), for whom she has written a message in English and throws at her through the
I haven’t seen that film, but Dan Gilroy & Nico Soultanakis’ script really forged connections on an emotional level. The script beautifully explores the cyclical link that is prevalent between a story teller and a listener. The reason for Roy setting his fantasy story in India or using elephants or bringing in a character-like nurse Evelyn is to make Alexandria easily connect with it. And so, the story & its characters not only belong to the teller, but also the listener (even all the story-tellers possess a doppelganger called ‘listener’). Towards the end, Alexandria cries “Why are you killing everyone?” because Roy hasn’t provided emotional catharsis, the girl expects from the story. That scene particular soulfully examines a viewer’s or listener’s obsession to participate in the designer’s vision. I mean, we all might have got annoyed after watching a movie, when the director takes a turn by degrading or killing a character we had very much connected with. Stories have these ever-growing roots that distort and crystallize our thoughts. Sometimes we prefer this ‘root’ to possess the life-affirming qualities, while other times a dark quality. It’s all based on our vision of the world or from the joys & hurts we have encountered in this