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This is a movie pimp post.
Warning: This post contains gratuitous purple prose.
So my favorite movie is The Fall, by director/co-writer/visionary/freaking genius Tarsem Singh. The film was shot on 26 locations over 18 countries and took over 8 years to film, and Singh paid for the whole thing out-of-pocket because he believed in his vision so deeply.
The movie is the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen in my life. And that’s what people notice about it the first time they see it. It will make you want to travel. I seriously have to be careful about when I watch it because after I’m done I have such profound wanderlust that it makes me restless for a few days. It's a movie to restore your wonder in the world and its variety and beauty.
The plot, as far as it goes, is pretty simple. In a hospital in Los Angeles in the 1920s, a little girl named Alexandria (brilliantly played by Catinca Untaru) being treated for a broken arm wanders into another ward where she finds a bed-ridden man named Roy (played by Lee Pace, as if you needed another reason to watch this movie). They begin a tentative friendship, and Roy begins to tell Alexandria a story. He makes it up as he goes, and if you’re looking for a plot where everything has continuity and make sense, his story won’t be for you. Instead, it’s a story like most stories we make up for children—it rambles and sometimes contradicts itself and grows in the telling. It’s also ridiculous and fantastic and beautiful. Alexandria comes to visit Roy again and again and his story grows and so does their relationship. But Roy’s got a backstory of his own, as well as his own motives, and the movie takes turns you probably couldn’t have anticipated.
These images are, in my opinion, the key to understanding the movie.
When I was in college, the English department did movie nights, and I basically forced everyone to watch it (for the record, every single person loved it). Afterwards, I was talking to one of my professors, and he said, “I was a bit unclear on what he was trying to do with the film until I remembered the scene where the image of the horse outside came through the keyhole, and then I realized. This movie, honestly, isn’t at all about plot. It isn’t even really about characters. It’s a movie about movies. A story about stories.”
Exactly.
( cut for me waxing poetical in the most melodramatic of ways--but no spoilers )
Warning: This post contains gratuitous purple prose.
So my favorite movie is The Fall, by director/co-writer/visionary/freaking genius Tarsem Singh. The film was shot on 26 locations over 18 countries and took over 8 years to film, and Singh paid for the whole thing out-of-pocket because he believed in his vision so deeply.
The movie is the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen in my life. And that’s what people notice about it the first time they see it. It will make you want to travel. I seriously have to be careful about when I watch it because after I’m done I have such profound wanderlust that it makes me restless for a few days. It's a movie to restore your wonder in the world and its variety and beauty.
The plot, as far as it goes, is pretty simple. In a hospital in Los Angeles in the 1920s, a little girl named Alexandria (brilliantly played by Catinca Untaru) being treated for a broken arm wanders into another ward where she finds a bed-ridden man named Roy (played by Lee Pace, as if you needed another reason to watch this movie). They begin a tentative friendship, and Roy begins to tell Alexandria a story. He makes it up as he goes, and if you’re looking for a plot where everything has continuity and make sense, his story won’t be for you. Instead, it’s a story like most stories we make up for children—it rambles and sometimes contradicts itself and grows in the telling. It’s also ridiculous and fantastic and beautiful. Alexandria comes to visit Roy again and again and his story grows and so does their relationship. But Roy’s got a backstory of his own, as well as his own motives, and the movie takes turns you probably couldn’t have anticipated.
These images are, in my opinion, the key to understanding the movie.
When I was in college, the English department did movie nights, and I basically forced everyone to watch it (for the record, every single person loved it). Afterwards, I was talking to one of my professors, and he said, “I was a bit unclear on what he was trying to do with the film until I remembered the scene where the image of the horse outside came through the keyhole, and then I realized. This movie, honestly, isn’t at all about plot. It isn’t even really about characters. It’s a movie about movies. A story about stories.”
Exactly.
( cut for me waxing poetical in the most melodramatic of ways--but no spoilers )
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