The Fall (2006)

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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The Fall (2006)

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

The Fall is a complicated movie that I am not going to do justice. My wife had it recommended to her, so we watched it tonight.

The movie starts out with black and white images of, among other things, a train and a horse. The credits are added to the images we see, Omega Race-style. At the very end, the last credit says that it was produced and directed by TARSEM. Instantly I hated this movie. We do first names and last names in this country, you pretentious twat.

I am happy to say that the movie was able to win me back. There are two stories going on with The Fall. The first is of a stunt man named Roy who - after his girlfriend leaves him for the guy he stunted for and got paralyzed for - is trying to manipulate a little girl he meets in recovery to get him enough morphine so he can kill himself. Nothing three-quarters of the denizens of this BBS haven't been through. Roy is the most relatable character in modern-day cinema. The second is an epic fantasy tale that he weaves for the little girl that we get to see acted out so the manipulation can happen.

I am told that there aren't any computer generated special effects in the movie. I will take that as truth. My wife was constantly identifying real life locations in the movie, like a "blue city" and some place with up and down staircases that looked straight out of the Atari 2600 version of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." I have read that the director TARSEM flew all around the world to get these scenes. Well buddy, the movie looks great, one of the most visually spectacular things I've ever seen.

The movie reminded me a little bit of The Wizard of Oz and a little bit of Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, which also came out in 2006. If you disliked both of those movies you won't like The Fall, but I do and I did. I would be doing you all a disservice if I did not mention the performance of Catinca Untaru, who was like 8 or 9 when the movie was made, playing a convincing 5-year old. I love it when they give little kids Oscars and she certainly did enough to get consideration, though I have read that maybe they didn't make her memorize lines but instead had her react to what people were doing as if it was real. I don't know. There's a lot written about this movie.

Trying to completely avoid spoilers, at the very end of the movie something happens that makes a character wonder if anything really matters at work and in the course of employment, which still resonates as true 15 years later.

The end lost me a bit - it seems to want to make itself a love letter to stunt men and I would say it earns that only if it's really true that people were flying around with no computer effects and stunt men were used throughout. It's a problem with the media of movies, though, because there is no point in the medium where they can tell you if stuff is computer generated or not.

Very polarizing, I'd give it a strong three and a half stars. It's probably a better movie than the 2018 version of Halloween that I saw the other day, but I liked the Halloween remake juuuuuust a smidge more because I am really into the slasher genre. I am bad at movie reviews.
the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!