The Fall

It’s 1915 in Los Angeles. A five-year-old Romanian immigrant named Alexandria was picking oranges with her family to make a living when she fell out of a tree and broke her arm. Now she is in a rather nice hospital, recovering. She is befriended by Roy, a wannabe stunt man whose very first stunt, a jump on a horse from a railroad trestle into river went badly wrong. He may be paralyzed, may never walk again. He begins telling the girl a fanciful story concerning five men who are tracking down the evil Governor Odious, to kill him. He uses her fascination with the story to trick her into stealing morphine for him, so he can kill himself.

The story is good, without being great, but this is one of those rare films worth watching just for the costumes and the settings, if nothing else. They are astonishing! The director, who prefers the single name Tarsem, is said to have financed this with his own money, which is also astonishing. It just isn’t done. Parts of the film were shot in more than twenty different countries, though most was in India. It is impossible to tell these days when something is actual or CGI, but it seems almost all of this is real. No kidding, it really is worth watching just for that.