Indian-born director Tarsem Singh’s gift of
visual story-telling is near unsurpassed. He goes bolder and bigger than most
filmmakers dare dream. Yet, his movies mostly are cinematic
affairs for the eyes, with the brain left to defend for itself. “Cell” (2000)
and “Immortals” (2011) fall in those categories. So goes it with two other of
his films I watched back-to-back: “Mirror, Mirror,” a new take on “Snow White,”
and “The Fall,” a fairy tale possibly aimed at adults who prefer movies weird
and wireder.
“Mirror” only pretends to be a subversive take
on the famous Grimm Fairytale as the opening minutes has Julia Roberts as the Evil
Queen going all snarky on her Fairest of Them All step-daughter (Lily Collins),
during a voice-over with some wildly cool stop-motion animation. I thought we
were in for a dark cinematic upside-down cake treat: The story of a misunderstood queen about a poison-apple princess brat. But, no. It’s the same story told by Walt Disney and onward, but made so bright and fluffy, and with such
movie set fakery, it smells of some flippant meta-movie joke against ticket-buying
parents.
Only one
scene involving marionette assassins after Snow and her dwarves hypes
eye-popping Tarsem magic. The rest of the running time is dull as slush. Yes,
Roberts has a hoot dishing one-lines and cruel judgments with a wide smile, but
she’s never playing anything else than some inner-joke take on her apparent prima-donna
spoiled movie star self. I can only guess her direction likely consisted
of, “Just be yourself! But more!”
Collins is drab, and -– cruel to say, I know -– not a bit fair. When she’s onscreen, the film dives, even during an
early ball scene where Collins wears a white goose dress that strangely echoes Bjork’s
Oscar outfit from 2000. Did Robert stipulate in her contact that she had to be
the fairest and best-dressed on the set? One wonders.
As the Prince, Armie Hammer (“SocialNetwork”) throws himself forehead deep into the role of a buffoon. At one
point, he plays puppy love. Literally. Barking, panting and whining. I felt bad
for him. C-
“Fall” is a fairytale adventure set inside the
unlimited mind of an imaginative, wildly curious 6-year-old girl. It’s lovely
to look at, a film unlike any that I have ever seen. Yet, that’s the kicker of this epic in-every-sense-of-the-word story. Director/co-writer Tarsem
spent four years in two dozen countries making his
film and every bit of work is onscreen. It’s all and only
visual. It’s a shame “Fall” is not a solid film to put all the senses to work.
The setup: Circa 1914, a movie stuntman (Lee Pace) lays
bedridden at a Los Angeles sanitarium, injured after an onset incident has
left him unable to walk. Riddled with anger, and heartbreak because
his Hollywood girlfriend has left him for another man, Roy decides on suicide. He
befriends a young girl (Catinca
Untaru), herself recovering from a broken arm, and tells her a long, twisting tale
about four adventurers (Pace among them, as The Masked Bandit) each seeking a kill-or-be-killed
revenge vendetta against an evil king (Daniel Caltagirone, also playing the “another
man.”)
Untaru’s youngster listens, and we see the visuals inside her
head played out on screen, including her mistaken rendering of an “Indian”
as a warrior from India, not Roy’s intended stereotype of a Native
American. There’s action, adventure, kidnapping, sword-fights, swimming
elephants, an assassinated monkey, castles, desert landscapes,
and lush jungles, all peopled by workers and residents surrounding the girl at
the hospital. There’s Charles Darwin, too, a swashbuckling hero. Less-than-honest Roy has a hidden motive as spins his tale: He
wants his young friend to bring him morphine pills from the supply
closet. That’s his path to suicide bliss.
It all mostly sounds very
similar to a children’s film, certainly the plot is childlike, but the graphic violence
is tough, and the film takes a hard-to-swallow tearjerker finale far too dark and
violent for anyone younger than, say, 14. Who knows who Tarsem is targeting
with all this doom and gloom, and redemption, and irony of life, and
celebration of silent film. Not children. Not art house adults who would
snicker at the heroics. My only guess, this is a film by Tarsem for Tarsem, and
we are the incidental audience.
Watch it for images, the dance sequences, the
roving, flowing camerawork. Every shot is worthy of a picture frame. Just don’t expect
a “Tree of Life” life-altering experience. Cool bonus points: Most of the
scenes between Pace (poor sap starred in “Marmaduke”) and the adorably hard-to-understand Untaru are
improvised, the actor playing quick off her rambling talk and mistaken readings
that only a child can provide, unscripted. It works beautifully up into
the film’s tone goes crocodile tears. Bravo
beautiful effort, though. B-
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