“What would’ve happened if Andrei Tarkovsky had made The Wizard of Oz,” said David Fincher of Tarsem Singh’s The Fall, a visually dazzling tale that perhaps wasn’t as well-received upon its 2006 release as it should have been. Now, nearly two decades later, the cult classic epic has been restored in 4K and will be rolling out on MUBI starting September 27 following its Locarno Film Festival premiere.
Filmed over four years in 20 difference locations across the globe, here’s the synopsis for the film starring Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru: “Los Angeles circa 1920s, a little immigrant girl in a hospital recovering from a fall, strikes up a friendship with a bedridden man. He captivates her with a whimsical story that removes her far from the hospital doldrums into the exotic landscape of her imagination.”
“It’s my baby,” the director told Little White Lies. “I went bankrupt making it and I’d go bankrupt another ten times to do it. I mean, not exactly bankrupt, but I lost all my money. But if I had another monkey on my back like that, I would do it again without blinking,”
Tarsem also discussed the slight edit he made with this new version, speaking to ScreenAnarchy:
Well, the original was pretty much the director’s cut, but this new version is a minute and 20 seconds longer. There was one line that I wish I had not changed. In retrospect, when people go to an arthouse film, they get it immediately. But when people saw it back then, they didn’t realize it was from a child’s perspective.
Initially, it was supposed to start with “Once upon a time in Los Angeles,” signaling a grown-up’s fairy tale, perhaps remembered by an older person. When I tried using the voice of an older person in the beginning, it felt clichéd, like Titanic. It wasn’t that type of film, so I couldn’t use that voice. So I left it out, and people found the story naïve.
In retrospect, I realized I should have kept that title. Tarantino was right with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood—it signifies an alternative reality. It sets the tone correctly. So, I put that back in because it was what the film needed.
See the trailer and poster below.
