The Fall
Director: Tarsem Singh
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 1.5
A girl with a broken arm (and an even more broken accent) befriends a suicidal Hollywood stuntman in the hospital - he wants her to get morphine for him so he can kill himself, but first he entertains her with a story about Final Fantasy-type warriors off to kill a mad ruler. It's true that this contains glorious images, color and costumes and utilizes several dazzling real-life structures as sets but there's a giant emotional and intellectual void in the center of the movie, and the power of the pictures has no 'core' to reinforce: it's a globetrotting screensaver. Tarsem makes no mystery of his artsy influences, from Pier Paolo Pasolini to Anish Kapoor to Maurizio Cattelan, and his apparent rejection of CGI is commendable, but he might be more focused - and make a less flaky, indulgent picture - if he had a real script and a shorter leash. You didn't see Jodorowsky getting this kind of funding....
