MAD about Movies

The Best Movie You Never Heard About
Mary Ann de Stefano

One of my personal rules about the movies: the greater the hype, the bigger the flop.

When the movie’s stars appear ubiquitously on TV talk shows (gabbing about how much “fun” they had making the movie, rather than how good it is) you can be sure the buildup is intended to draw box office business that can’t be sustained once reviews appear.

While the hype-the-flop rule can help you avoid some painful movie experiences, it’s just as easy for quiet treasures to go unnoticed. The Fall is a jewel that almost slipped past me. It may be the best movie you never heard about.

Imagined for 17 years and filmed in 18 locations around the world over four years, this stunning visual treat is the result of director Tarsem Singh’s obsession. He even paid for the production out of his own pocket.

Search this film out, and be amazed by sights you’ve never seen before -- soldiers zigzagging on Escher-like staircases, an elephant swimming underwater, a blue city -- all real. No matte drawings. No computer graphics. Merely Tarsem's vision, some great location scouting, and the magic that happens when a shot is framed just so.

The colors in this movie are as extravagant as the settings. Watch to see how carefully Tarsem places bursts of color in a frame.

The story takes place in a Los Angeles hospital where Alexandria, recovering from a broken arm, meets Roy, a silent movie era stuntman with broken legs and a broken heart.

"I'll tell you a story," he says to her. "Close your eyes. There were five of them. The Indian..." Injured while making a cowboy movie, Roy intends "Native American." But the little girl is Romanian and doesn't understand the word as he does. She imagines a man in a turban.

As the fantasy story within a story unfolds, we hear Roy's words, but we see it through Alexandria's eyes. She understands something very different from what he's saying. We witness the story through the lens of her experiences, and we see how the images and people she's familiar with feed her imagination. Alexandria even takes herself into the story when she thinks Roy has lost control of it.

The Fall is much more than a delicious visual spectacle, it's about the relationship between the story teller and the one who hears it. It's about any art and the eye, mind, and heart of the beholder. It's an ode to imagination.

I wasn't quite sure about what happened at the end, and I think Tarsem meant the film to be subtly ambiguous, leaving the moviegoer to tie up a loose end herself. After all, the teller isn't the only who creates the tale.

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Mary Ann de Stefano blogs about film’s life lessons and other pleasures of the cinema. Her childhood fascination with classic movies on a flickering TV screen delivered glimpses into adult life that led her to believe the answers to all life’s questions could be found in movies. When she’s not at a multiplex theater, an alternative cinema, or home watching movies, Mary Ann is a writer, editor and writing coach doing business as MAD about Words. Named for a play on her initials and passion for writing, her company also nurtures creativity through workshops and the Lounge -- a free networking website for writers. She writes short fiction and personal essays and lives in Winter Park, Florida. Read more!

MAD about Movies

EXPANDING WHAT'S POSSIBLE
Mary Ann de Stefano

As young girls, my little sister Louise and I could often be found sitting in front of our big console TV, just as we are in this photo. In those days, there were few channels to watch, but on weekends at least one station gave the whole afternoon over to old movies. Many cold winter days, when our mother couldn’t send us out to play, we fed on popcorn and classic films.

Rapt, we soaked in stories and images that became inextricably mixed with our real life experiences. So mixed, that decades later, my sister can say one word -- Mamselle -- just as it was spoken in the lesser-known Bette Davis movie All This and Heaven, Too, and the sound of it will dredge up a whole raft of attitudes and memories we don’t have to speak about to know we share.

Of course the themes of many movies we saw went way over our young heads, but even so, the movies made an imprint. Fred and Ginger, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and other Hollywood stars were our teachers. We learned about greed from the Treasure of the Sierra Madre, evil from the Night of the Hunter, honor from Casablanca, religious zeal and hypocrisy from Elmer Gantry, romantic love from scads of films, and much more.

We didn’t take movies all that seriously at the time. We didn’t feel their stories seeping into our bones in ways that would affect how we grappled with life's big questions as we matured. Movies merely enthralled us. Little did we know that they were artfully drawing us into thinking, feeling, and synthesizing a world well beyond the limited one our small town, little house, and busy parents could offer us.

And that’s the value of art, storytelling, the movies. They prod us to explore ideas, emotions, and meaning that our own physical experiences may not encourage. They invite us to create deeper relationships with the world, with others, and with ourselves. They open us up to possibility.

Hours and hours of movie-watching probably warped us in some ways. Perhaps I believe a little too much in love conquering all, happy endings, and tough guys with mushy hearts. Perhaps I am a little too naive about the power of good over evil, and too disappointed adult life doesn’t hold more occasions for evening gowns, tuxedos, and art deco settings. People hardly ever break out into song on sweeping staircases.

Sometimes they do, though. Once, in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal, I heard a woman, high above the rush hour bustle, break into song on the marble staircase. Her operatic voice filled the cavernous space and brought commuters on the main concourse to a standstill. It was just the sort of magic moment that you might think could only happen in the movies -- but this was reality.

Anything is possible.


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Mary Ann de Stefano posts about film’s life lessons and other pleasures of the cinema. Her childhood fascination with classic movies on a flickering TV screen delivered glimpses into adult life that led her to believe the answers to all life’s questions could be found in movies. When she’s not at a multiplex theater, an alternative cinema, or home watching movies, Mary Ann is a writer, editor and writing coach doing business as MAD about Words. Named for a play on her initials and passion for writing, her company also nurtures creativity through workshops and the Lounge -- a free networking website for writers. She writes short fiction and personal essays and lives in Winter Park, Florida. Read more!