Singh - Blog Posts

Tarsem’s The Fall #2 - Immersion

In this series I’m exploring the reasons why Tarsem’s “The Fall” is my favorite movie.

Seeing a movie for the first time can be awfully important because as the viewer goes along with the story they build up their attitudes, which will hardly change later. Now this doesn’t apply in all cases, since many art films heavily rely on alienation, absurdity and obscurity, all these undermining the importance of the first time, as the case is often that the conception and solidification of attitudes and a deeper understanding of the experience come later. In fact we regularly process movies after the event, however this is usually more of an adjustment in the case of genre movies.

One feature that I find overarching The Fall is its generosity and it is present and foremost here, in the field of immersion, as well as in many other places. The Fall, being an independent film with an R rating, didn’t have very much to win by being as viewer-friendly as it ended up being. My argument is that this film is enjoyable and not at all puzzling at the first time viewing but it serves an artistic purpose and not popularity.

I found two interconnected parts of the film that helped it accomplish this feat.

#1: Placing us in Alexandria’s point of view. First off, a child seems a relatable protagonist, since everyone has been one. Her being in a hospital with a broken arm seems like nothing out of the ordinary; even if one has never had a broken bone, there’s nothing predominantly exotic about it.

#2: The narrative arc is gradual. To delay the exposure of the audience to the more powerful motifs of a film is a hard thing to do because it requires confidence in the script and performances and high payoff value expectation. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the story’s starting point is very familiar and seemingly simple. When we are shown the characters and their depths, the movie follows a classic formula: we start with more mundane details and progressively move toward the more dramatic. A juxtaposition: in today’s storytelling it’s more common to try to shock the viewer early on and thus induce an immediate and strong emotional response.

The Fall follows through with this approach of gradual expansion on every layer, e.g. Roy’s story starts out as an independent tale, which is very safe and light, then it becomes inseparable with their reality and concerns the darkest and hardest topics around the end. In this narrative mode the audience is granted safety from confusion, as there’s an obvious story on the top that is entertaining in itself. At the same time, however, the more profound layers of the film, through being concentrated in the later parts, can be encountered without the deception that sudden shocks and an ensuing emotional chaos would have caused. Thus I think the art in The Fall is exquisitely genuine and can be experienced as such, which is a very rare merit.

Tarsem’s The Fall #1 - Resonating

The Fall is my favorite movie, so on many occasions I was confronted with the question, ”What do you like about it?” In this series that I’m starting right here and right now I’d like to investigate the reasons behind my connection to the movie. I want to start by the most personal tie.

When I first saw the movie I had no more than a vague idea what it would be about and a brief sample that I had watched just to know if it’s as beautiful as promised. As the story unfolded I was, of course, swept away by the beautiful imagery and the generous and unpretentious way a child’s imagination is translated to film but of course this wasn’t my first time seeing gripping visuals.

At the bottom of my experience there lay a powerful component: Much like Alexandria uses an avatar in the form of nurse Evelyn at one point of the story, I too have found a character to embody me. Prior to my first viewing I had had a very unpleasant happening with my heart and I was still far from having a ready medical report, so I was compressed into a two-dimensional state, consisting of uncertainty and fear, these very efficiently feeding each other. Later I turned out to have a manageable condition but at that time I was thoroughly afraid of dying. As a twenty-one-year-old this was my first time of facing mortality in its reality and eventuality. To me the way Roy took the defeatist standpoint was a familiar attitude, as I was also regarding my state very grimly.

Roy: “ It was the natural order of things... all things must die.”

The catharsis at the end of the movie, with the idiosyncratic added heartbeat-sound, could really move me. Although I saw no analogy there with my life, I still felt lifted up and hopeful, which was something I craved.

Months later, when I revisited The Fall, I had had new developments and I finally knew considerably more about my health. I was in no imminent danger but I was ordered to keep away from a very long list of kinds of physical exercise, which made me morose. I, a young person, had known the world most profoundly through times spent with the thumping in my ear, signalling that I was at my top speed or at the limits of my strength. Sports have been to me, what I’m sure is easily relatable, the place to feel very clearly that I was alive.

Deprived of this physical but pure joy I felt, and to a certain extent still do, that I had been handicapped, robbed of my physical future. I saw that I was restrained to the bounds of moderate movement and I was filled with the hateful expectation that my life, however distant from actual danger now, would undoubtedly be deemed to be shorter than what I had originally hoped for.

Over time my fears had somewhat dissipated but whenever I watch poor Roy struggle with his very physical inadequacy and his hopelessness I also see myself. The Fall is a story, in which people use a story to shape reality (had I no medical issue I’d probably love this movie most for being so meta) because stories, however escapist, have actual impact on the audience’s reality. I had always been invested in fiction because I understood that it has the potential to be almost supernaturally powerful, however, no story had cut deeper than this and none had treated me with more care than this.

There’s no happy ending with me.