Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastic story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances.
Tarsem Singh's The Fall is a visually audacious and emotionally rich film that earns high marks across most categories. The plot is a beautifully layered meta-narrative where the stuntman's suicidal despair bleeds into the fantasy tale, creating genuine stakes and emotional resonance far beyond typical fantasy storytelling. The acting, particularly Lee Pace and young Catinca Untaru, is remarkably naturalistic and affecting — Untaru's performance especially feels utterly unguarded and real. Cinematography is genuinely exceptional, shot across 24 countries with Tarsem's painter's eye; the images are among the most visually arresting in any film of the 2000s. Novelty is very high — the film is singular in its conception, blending a child's imaginative interpretation with an adult's desperation, and no other film looks or feels quite like it. The ending, while emotionally earned and genuinely moving, is slightly less distinctive than what preceded it, landing in more conventional emotional territory compared to the film's radical visual and narrative ambitions — thus the one category held back.