If You Liked Immortals, You Owe It To Yourself to Watch The Fall

Between Immortals winning the box office and the trailer for Mirror Mirror, that other Snow White movie, hitting the internet today, director Tarsem Singh is having a moment. I love this man, he makes absolutely gorgeous movies.

I knew I was going to see Immortals as soon as it opened, even if the reviews weren't great, because I knew it would look phenomenal, and I wanted it to be ten feet tall in front of me--and in 3D! Whatever else is ever said about Tarsem Singh, the man knows how to take a freakin' picture. Every shot of Immortals was intricate and beautiful. Even the gore was exquisite (And the 3D is great for a change).

Yes, Roger Ebert was right, Immortals is "the best looking awful movie you will ever see." For the record I didn't think it was awful, but it isn't great.  What IS great, and also exquisite, and also phenomenal, is another Tarsem Singh movie, The Fall.

Like Immortals, The Fall is very mythic and grand. It's about a little girl in a 1915 California hospital with a broken arm (six-year-old non-actor Cantica Untaru, adorable), who befriends a bedridden stunt man (Lee Pace, also adorable). He tells her a story, whch makes up the bulk of the film: we see it through her eyes, so every misinterpretation becomes part of the story. As their own experiences become part of the tale, we begin to see how people aren't always what they seem, or what we want them to be. It has the visual grandeur of Immortals and some of the more whimsical tone of Mirror Mirror, without being too cute. And  I always cry at the end, but by this point, that's just Whatever.

Everything about The Fall is beautiful. The acting is wonderful. It also has a very dry sense of humor. And because it's a Tarsem Singh movie, every shot could be your computer's wallpaper:

And this is a crappy one, comparatively.

The thing about The Fall that makes it better than Immortals is that it isn't bogged down by CGI. There is no CGI according to the director, which is hard to believe but makes sense: it was completely funded by Singh and shot wherever he happened to be making a commercial or music video at the time (there are over 20 countries used as locations over the course of 4 years). It takes place entirely in a world that actually exists, and wasn't painted on later. We don't really get any sense of wonder with CGI anymore, first because we can tell it's there, but also because of course it looks bananas, it's supposed to. In Immortals, people are running all over cliff faces and you're never afraid they're going to fall. In The Fall, with its real locations, every shot makes your brain go, "LOOK at what this LOOKS LIKE!"

Of course I love the pretty pictures: this movie was the first time I really understood the concept of drinking something in with your eyes. But the story is also so, so beautiful. It's about the way we tell each other stories, and the way we use them. How we become interwoven into them, both as a teller and a listener. It's also about the way we heal each other, whether on purpose or not. How much our intentions matter, or don't, and what they can cost us. Also Lee Pace looks really good in his sleeveless bandit outfit.

I cannot promise you the gore-orgy (Goregy? Can we coin that?) of Immortals, if you were approaching that movie from a 300-style perspective. Although there is SPOILER some very creative dying at the end. And cool fightin'! When I saw it it was on Netflix instant and Starz, neither of which it is now, and you can only buy it on iTunes not rent it and it's not on Amazon, so I'm sending you on kind of a hero's quest to obtain this thing. But it's worth it! If you return No Strings Attached to Netflix tomorrow you could have it by the weekend, and you weren't really even going to watch that anyway, come on.