The Fall (2006)

I am not the sort of girl you want to take to a film festival....

    As much as I love fine art, and I really try to find something good about every piece I look at, I really struggle with weird films. You know the films that are so discombobulated, abstract, and freaky that you feel like you're having some horrible dream? The films that feel like nightmares, or Alice-in-Wonderland-style, drug-induced trippiness (yes I said trippiness)? Often, they are accompanied by Beatles' tracks that have been tortured to the point where they don't sound like the Beatles anymore, and there's usually a lot of shaky camera action, kaleidoscopes, and dry ice. I don't like those films at all. Yes, they are visually fascinating, but they make no sense! Maybe that's the point, but if I'm going to sit and watch something for 2+ hours, I'd like it to make a little sense. Just a little.
     So I was pretty surprised when last week I came away from a somewhat abstract, very artistic film and loved it.
     Set in the 1920's, The Fall is the story of two broken people who are absurdely opposite, but need each other desperately. One of them is Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), a five-year-old girl who has immigrated to the U.S from Romania after her home was burned and her father cut down in front of her eyes. She and her mother work in a Californian orange grove, and she is now in the hospital after falling from an orange tree and breaking her collar bone. The poor thing spends the entire movie with her arm perched out to the side in this absurd cast...so cute.
       In the same hospital is Roy (Lee Pace), a film stuntsman who attempted suicide after the love of his life left him for a wealthy actor. He "fell" from a bridge, and is slowly recovering, but tries desperately to sabotage his own recovery. He wants to die, and as soon as possible. The only problem is he has been rendered immobile by the fall and can't find any way to end his life while stuck in bed. He needs an assistant, so he befriends Alexandria one day when she pokes her head into his recovery room. He begins to tell her a story that is so wild and immaginative we are all hooked....until he stops the story, always at the good part. He promises to finish the story if she runs some errands for him...if she is a good little bandit. Intrigued and perfectly innocent, the girl fetches him morphine pills, or whatever else he asks for, just to keep him telling this crazy story.
    Slowly, the difference between the story he is telling and the story we are watching become indiscernable. His life imitates his art and vice versa. Then the girl starts to see her new friend spriraling down into darkness that only her sweetness and resolve could prevent...did I mention she's only five? Somewhere in this damaged man, she sees something of her slain father that she is desperate to protect. At one point, Roy asks her if she is trying to save his soul. She barely speaks English and has never heard of a soul, so she just gives him a toothless grin.
     What I adored about this film was how brutally honest it was. This man is broken physically, emotionally, spiritually because he lost the woman he loves to a suave and careless actor. In comparison, the little girl has lost considerably more, but never loses her hope. She won't succumb to the darkness, and fights like a maniac to keep him from falling out of the light.
     The story he tells is like a vivid mish-mash of Persian, Spanish, and African fairytales, and oh yeah! Charles Darwin is there too. The film is rated R for violence, and it is at times a little graphic, but never excessively so; I wouldn't let a little one watch it, but it should be safe for ages 15 and up (depending on the child, of course). There was no sexual content, and I can't remember any profane language.  There are some scary bits, of course, but all-in-all, this was one of the more uplifting films I've seen this year. Suicide and depression are heavy subjects, but this film portrays those grownup themes as seen through the eyes of a child; a child who has every right to feel depressed but doesn't. Yes, it is dark at times, and at other times it is a little scattered, but this piece of colorful and emotional film carries a better plot than its blockbuster counterparts.

If I have failed to persuade you, here is the link to the IMDB site with the trailer. Go watch!!! The Fall