Edinburgh International Film Festival

The Fall is an engrossing and eye popping film by Tarsem Singh and starring Catinca Untaru, Justine Waddell, and Lee Pace. The film opens with black and white film actors trying to retrieve fellow actors from a river after a shoot. The music for the scene is captivating, and holds your interest through the opening credits. After the film changes back to color, a little girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) takes the stage. She is an immensely curious young lady with a broken arm. Alexandria befriends Roy, one of the actors who was thrown into the river during the opening scene and is now recuperating in the hospital where she is staying. Roy begins to tell her a fascinating story about bandits who rise against the evil Governor. The story is set in a far away land of sprawling deserts and beautiful cities. The girl is captivated, and is thereby turned into an assistant to the man in the completion of his goals.
The cinematography in The Fall is excellent, as in the acting and the score. The plot is a bit weighed down by the actor’s story, but is necessary to be such to convey as large of a meaning and impact the audience as much as the filmmakers needed to do. The color choices made during the movie are genius. The little girl’s world is subdued colors of pale whites and light darks, while the colors used in the imaginary world created in the girl’s mind by the actor’s story are vivid and magical. Dark blacks and blues and violent reds help place emphasis on the story and its imaginative power. The movie is a fun yet emotional trainride through a brief period of the two central characters lives, and will leave audiences pleased and entertained. I give it 4.9 stars, because of the unnecessary death of a primate.