The Fall

Brief information on the film

The Fall (2006), written by Tarsem Singh is set in 1920’s at Los Angeles hospital, where an injured stuntman meets a little girl who has broken arm; they start to bond, creating a friendship and the injured man begins to tell the little girl a tale in which there are five mythical heroes, though for more immoral purposes. As he tells the tale, the distinction between his story and reality begin to blur as his true intentions are revealed.


My interpretation

The Fall (2006) to me is two stories placed within one; the name the fall represents a fall between the story and reality.

First story: At the Los Angeles hospital in 1920, an injured movie stuntman Roy Walker, paralysed as a result of a fall off a railroad trestle becomes good friends with another patient, Alexandria; a little girl who has broken her arm while picking oranges with her immigrant mother. Roy begins to tell the girl a story about wild adventure tale. However it slowly becomes clear that he has a hidden agenda. His story is a crafty way of manipulating the child into stealing the morphine pills he needs to commit suicide.

Second story: The tale unfolds as Roy merges himself, the child and their shared troubles into a adventurous epic about a masked hero, the Black Bandit who with the help of an escaped slave, an Indian mystic, an Italian explosives expert and the naturalist fights to rescue his lady love, Princess Evelyn, from the clutches of the evil Governor Odious.

Other People?

In my research, I started looking at what other people thought and what The Fall meant to them. I looked at websites such as wikipedia, IMDb and even looked at The Fall main website; i took note of some of the reviews... below are my findings in each website...

In looking on the Wikipedia website, I found information on the sort of reception the film recieved... below is the information list from wiki.

"The film received generally positive reviews from critics. As of 14 February 2009, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 61% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 94 reviews. Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 64/100, based on 23 reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film 4/4, and wrote, "You might want to see for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it.Nathan Lee of The New York Times, however, wrote that the film "is a genuine labor of love — and a real bore.""

On IMDb I find that there were many reviews but this was voted best as 177 out of 201 people found the following review useful:

'The Fall is a charming, fantastical story with a haunting undertone and features the most endearing child actress since Jacques Doillon's Ponette... what more could a film boast? Moreover, this film could be watched on mute and still make a lasting impression on the viewer through its striking imagery. The Fall is the story of Alexandria, an injured immigrant child wandering the hospital where she is being treated. The viewer is drawn, with Alexandria into a dark and extravagant world through the story of a maimed stuntman who she befriends. The skilled interaction between the finely divided reality and fantasy is reminiscent of David Cronenberg's eXistenZ. I can not recommend this film any more strongly'

The Fall to these people on IMDb site was 'visually spectacular and emotionally engaging'.


When I was looking on The Fall main movie website, I came across some reviews/articles on what people thought of the film. One of the article i read was the article written by Robert Ebert; he expresses Tarsem's ""The Fall" is a mad folly, an extravagant visual orgy, a free-fall from reality into uncharted realms. Surely it is one of the wildest indulgences a director has ever granted himself." he goes on to say ""The Fall" is so audacious that when Variety calls it a "vanity project," you can only admire the man vain enough to make it."