The Fall (2006)

Director:

Tarsem Singh

Writers (WGA):

Dan Gilroy (screenplay) and
Nico Soultanakis (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

30 May 2008 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Fantasy

Tagline:

A Little Blessing In Disguise.

Plot:

In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman (Pace) begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm (Untaru), a fantastical 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. |

Plot Keywords:

Silent Movie | Suicide | World Wide | Magic | Stuntman

Awards:

2 wins

US Showtimes:

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Cast

Catinca Untaru	...	Alexandria
Justine Waddell	...	Nurse Evelyn / Sister Evelyn
Lee Pace	...	Roy Walker
Kim Uylenbroek	...	Doctor / Alexander the Great
Aiden Lithgow	...	Alexander's Messenger
Sean Gilder	...	Walt Purdy
Ronald France	...	Otto
Andrew Roussouw	...	Mr. Sabatini
Michael Huff	...	Dr. Whitaker
Grant Swanby	...	Father Augustine
Emil Hostina	...	Alexandria's Father / Bandit
Robin Smith	...	Luigi / One Legged Actor
Jeetu Verma	...	Indian / Orange Picker
Leo Bill	...	Darwin / Orderly
Marcus Wesley	...	Otta Benga / Ice Delivery Man

Runtime:

117 min

Country:

India | UK | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

SDDS | DTS | Dolby Digital

Certification:

Netherlands:12 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Agra Fort, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India

Company:

Absolute Entertainment (II)

Trivia:

A miscommunication between the casting agent and Catinca Untaru led her to believe that Lee Pace was a real-life paraplegic. Director Tarsem Singh found that this brought an added level of believability to their dialogue, so he decided to keep almost the entire cast and crew under the same impression. Singh had to speak to the actor playing Alexandria's father and explain that his role was smaller than it appeared, since the script implied that he played the role of the bandit (actually played by Pace) in the fantasy scenes. Apparently it was hard to keep up the lie - a makeup artist walked into a room to find Pace standing and almost passed out from shock.

Quotes:

Roy Walker: Next was the English naturalist: Charles Darwin. He loved all living things. Creatures, plants...everything alive.

Movie Connections:

Remake of Yo ho ho (1981)

Kids are alright

Let's make it as short as IMDb allows it: it's the most visually stunning movie for kids one can find. It surely will go down well with adults. It's like watching Miyazaki's animation - different things for both audiences. The settings & the characters are beyond astonishing. The story itself is quite ordinary fairytale, made more intriguing by adding mixture of reality.

Despite well known Tarsem's abilities to stun aesthetically, here we can credit him for outstanding direction of an adorable girl, who visits wounded soldier in pursuit of mystique tales about five heroes.

Seen it last year at Berlin festival - worth the applause. Good to know it will get wide release finally.