The Fall
Filmed piecemeal over four years and across at least twenty countries, funded in great part (millions of dollars great) by the director himself, The Fall is perhaps the definition of a passion project. It’s unwieldy, strange, jumbled, and, despite its epic scale, intensely personal, so if you can’t get on its wavelength it must seem mighty insufferable. But if you’re ready for it, if you can find yourself inside the film, its story is not only a powerful and moving depiction of how storytelling, and in particular, filmmaking, can save a person’s life, but a grand vision of how the world is, and how it should be. Visually spectacular (not a single landscape computer generated, so says Singh), it plays to Singh’s strength in imagery, letting it overtake the storytelling when words become too small to say what he needs them to say. In the end, its these images that express the goal that Singh was aiming for; to make the personal a dialogue, to invite the audience into something that can become their’s as well. When Catinca Untaru, playing a little girl enveloped by bed-ridden actor Lee Pace’s story, asks him why he’s killing all the heroes in the fantasy, Pace responds, “It’s my story.” He’s the self-indulgent filmmaker. But then she responds, “It’s my story too,” and we understand. There is no other movie like it.
