groschiThe Fall, 2006 - ★★★<br><br> Um... i don't get why this is so well liked. I've never seen a film that has "commercial director" written all over it in such a dull and predictable manner. No, as far as TV-commercial-gone-film directors go, this film has none of that Roy Andersson or Nobuhiko Obayashi juice to it. Sure, just like them, Tarsem Singh is very much in command of the frame here yet he can't ever transcend the slick artificiality of it all, like, you're just waiting for an airline, hygiene- or pharma product being shoved in your face the very next shot. The visuals are pretty much the main attraction of this film and still, everything comes across just a little bit too glossy and unimaginative to amount to anything more than a third-rate Terry Gilliam knock-off, some weird kind of arthouse-Zack Snyder or a live-action incarnation of that by-the-numbers blandness the UK's Cartoon Saloon studio keeps repeating on us ad nauseam. Just as stock and cliched is the (as i already said, quite Gilliam-derivative) plot and characters, making for a quite shaky foundation for the whole thing. For a film that is, supposedly, primarily about telling stories, those presented here are just lacking imagination and originality and the fact it tries way too hard for much of its running time to pull on the viewer's heartstrings without doing much to deserve all the fuss doesn't help either. What's left is a 120 minute travel advert complete with reality soap-level manufactured emotion and a pretty hollow excercise in style over substance. Dunno, if that shit impresses you, maybe just broaden your horizon regarding epics and fantasy a little bit. Watch yourself some other shit of varying meta-ness like Ran or Kwaidan or Holy Motors or Vij or Poor Things or Mad God or Marcel the Shell With Shoes On or The Seventh Seal or Synecdoche New York or The Love Witch or The Wolf House or Swiss Army Man or anything else that goes beyond the most basic fantasy/adventure-formulæ 'cos there's a whole world of fantastic cinema out there to be discovered. Or maybe just go straight back to the source and watch the fucking Princess Bride or some actual Terry Gilliam. I won't even judge you if it has to be The Fisher King. Just stop telling me how brilliant and imaginative The Fall is. Everything that happens here, i've seen before in some slightly different, usually more accomplished form.<br><br><a href="https://letterboxd.com/groschi/film/the-fall/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://letterboxd.com/groschi/film/the-fall/</a><br><a class="hashtag" href="https://12xu.xyz/tag/film" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#Film</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://12xu.xyz/tag/movies" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#Movies</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://12xu.xyz/tag/cinema" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#Cinema</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://12xu.xyz/tag/cinemastodon" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#CineMastodon</a> <span class="h-card"><a class="u-url mention" href="https://a.gup.pe/u/film" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>film</span></a></span>