The Fall - Not Tight (By Timothy Johnston)

The Fall

Seen at: Giessen (Germany) 08/09/2009

Even though this movie came out in 2006, it did not run in Germany until 2009. A possible explanation would be that that is how long it took them to translate the brainless and futile dialogues without lessening this film's idiocy in any way. It is one of those films that you should get the money for the ticket back - and then some (for lost time and overall frustration).

The film reportedly made $3 Mio. worldwide. Tarsem Singh, the director has not disclosed the production costs, which leads me to believe that they must have been a lot higher than that - always embarrassing for a director. On the other hand, Singh saved a lot of money on actors by only hiring appaling ones that would probably work for free just to see their names on the movie poster. Talking of the poster, it announced that Singh is an "acclaimed director" and that this movie was filmed in 20 different countries. Well, that may be true (I mean the country-thing), but I am afraid that is not enough to make a decent film.
I imagine that on his worldwide voyages, Singh would take off with his camera, leaving the guided tour behind to film random scenery. When he got back from the 20 countries he visited, he looked at the material and thought: 'Golly! Look at all this crap! This would be enough for five movies - naah, I'll just make one'. And just like he then proceeded to patch bits and pieces together, this movie has turned out a random compilation of little snippets and clips, rudely glued together by a storyline that misses the point.

What does this guy do for a living anyway? When I looked at what this "acclaimed" director has produced so far, all I saw was The Cell (yes, starring J-Lo) in 2000 and the music video to Losing my Religion in 1991. You cannot possibly scrape by for that long by making two crappy movies and one, admittedly, respectable music video. I therefore suspect that making movies is not Singh's primary line of work, which would account for some of the incoherence of The Fall.

I am sorry I cannot give an account of the plot, but I simply did not understand it at all. There is one scene in particular that perhaps summarizes the movie most accurately. The protagonist is sitting with a broken leg in his hospital bed (we don't know how he broke his leg in the first place - he has been in bed the length of the film). A little girl is sitting next to him and listening to his cock-and-bull stories. However, every time the hero (some hero, since he has yet to leave bed) says a sentence, the girl, quite annoyingly, goes: "what?" and he has to repeat the entire phrase. This goes on for some time. It seems as if the screenwriter (who is also Singh - big surprise, huh?) ran out of ideas and thus stretched the film to two hours (that seem like five) with this technique. When this rubbish movie finally ends, that is pretty much the only clear thought left in the viewer's head - WHAT?