Underrated Movies of All Time - "The Fall"

Yeah, the post below this is the full movie of "The Fall." So, before seeing it, I hope you read my review first.



I absolutely love this movie. It can be adorable and humorous, but also dark and emotional. It has everything I look forward to in a great movie. Tarsem Singh is a great visionary, and I think he deserves credit for his fantastic abilities to capture human emotion and landscapes on film in the most surreal ways possible.

The movie starts out rather innocently and subtly. Alexandria, who is just adorable, has broken her arm and is staying at a local hospital where she meets an injured stuntman named Roy, played by Lee Pace. Charmed by the innocence of the little girl, Roy starts telling her an enchanting tale of five heroes; needless to say, those characters are unforgettable.



However, it slowly turns out that Roy is not only injured physically, but also mentally.

As the story slowly progresses, Alexandria realizes that Roy’s scarred emotions are manipulating the story, resulting in drastic turnabouts with violent mood swings.
The third act of this movie is one of the greatest climaxes I’ve ever seen in movies. It simply rips your heart out. I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s a clash of Alexandria’s longing for a happy ending as a child, and Roy’s insanity to destroy everything, including himself.



I don’t know how successful this film was when it came out in America in 2007, but as a Canadian, nobody’s seen it except for me. For not being a commercial film, I suspected that it wouldn’t necessarily be a blockbuster, but I’m surprised nobody even decided to take a gander at it.
Part of the reason, I think, is the fact that the director, Tarsem, has always been a commercial visionary. He’s directed many short clips for advertisements, and his film “The Cell” had great visions and atmosphere, but lacked in story and character development. Therefore, it’s possible for people to have underestimated “The Fall” as just eye candy.

But I assure you, it’s not.

There are bits and pieces of the story that keeps adding up and at the end, it makes you slap your knee and say “Oh, so that’s what it is!” Honestly, I couldn’t keep up with the minor details on the first time I saw it, so I recommend the DVD version, as rare as it is, because the attention to the details, progress in the characters’ emotions, and the visual style all compliment the plot and the atmosphere it’s trying to create.

“The Fall” is right up there with one of my favorite movies of all time. I highly recommend it for everyone (except for little children, for its disturbing images towards the end), five stars out of five, a billion thumbs up if I had that many.
It’s a movie leaves an unbelievable impression. It starts out bright, but ends on a dark, bittersweet note. It starts out young, and ends mature. And I friggin love that.