The Fall

I saw it, enjoyed the visuals from the amazing locations/scenery and in-camera effects (CGI was only used sparringly to clean up some shots in post), and the use of natural light cinematography and the interesting angles. Director Tarsem does a lot with a little with his penchant for visual flair in filmmaking over the course of many years in making this film.

The story itself lacked a little narrative weight for me to invest as fully as I had hoped in the main characters of Roy and Alexandria, who meet as patients in a hospital in 1915. Roy (Lee Pace, then unknown, but has found steady work of late as an actor) is injured and paralyzed in the lower extremities, and Alexandria has a broken arm, both of them suffered their injuries from a fall (one of many nods to the film's title). The performance of Alexandria, played by 5 year old (at the time) Catinca Untaru, is really endearing, and captured well, as the passage of time has a way of layering on bits of self-awareness that would have made her performance a little too self-aware had she had been older in the role.

It can be a polarizing film, but I did admire the attempt to create a somewhat timeless look to the film that can be appreciated ten, twenty years in the future without it losing a sense of it being dated or a project found in a time capsule.

I give it 3 stars or a grade of B.