The Fall

Let's start with what is currently my favorite movie, because that makes it easy for me.  The Fall directed by the visionary Singh Tarsem.  Why should you see this movie?  The short answer: visuals.  The long answer: it just gets everything right (I'll expound on that in later posts)

The story follows a girl in the hospital with a broken arm who befriends a former stunt actor paralyzed from the waist down.  The man tells her stories to win her trust (not for entirely selfless reasons) and we see the stories unfold in the highly imaginative visuals of a young girl's mind, a girl who has never seen a movie before.  The fact that she's never seen a movie is key.  Her imagination is not limited by the need for continuity or period accuracy.  She imagines characters in extravagant costumes, she imagines the most lush and monumental settings, and she inserts people she knows from her own life as the key players of the story.

I'll admit the costumes are one of my favorite things about this movie. Where else would anyone ever think of putting Charles Darwin in a vibrant red fur coat?

A remarkable thing about this movie is that no sets were built.  Everything was filmed on location (The perceptive art history student will recognize places like Hagia Sophia, Capitoline Hill, and Hadrian's Villa).  And man, what locations they are.  Without a doubt some of the most stunning and unearthly looking places, all of which exist in real life.  

Another thing about this film that makes my heart flutter is the care given to cinematography.  You could pause nearly any frame of this movie and hang it up on your wall.

The visuals are fit for an epic, yet they exist to back up a much simpler story, that of a hopeful little girl and a broken man.  That contrast makes the visuals more intimate and the story more powerful, and overall makes for an amazingly beautiful movie.