Earlier this month, fans of the wild cult fantasy movie The Fall got what seemed like the best news imaginable — Tarsem Singh’s 2006 magnum opus has been restored in 4K and will begin streaming on MUBI on Sept. 27. That release marks the end of a long period of unavailability for the film, which was both out of print in physical copies and was not streaming or available digitally. But MUBI announced on Thursday that The Fall is also coming to American theaters, with nationwide event screenings starting Tuesday, Oct. 15.
The movie is well worth seeing on the biggest screen possible. Tarsem famously shot The Fall in two dozen cities around the world, finding spectacular locations while location scouting for high-end commercial work, and earmarking them as sets for the movie. It’s an eye-popping wonder of a film, with stunning cinematography that looks crisper than ever in 4K.
Lee Pace stars as Roy, a lovelorn 1920s movie stuntman hospitalized and left paralyzed from the waist down after an on-set accident. He befriends a little girl, Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) in the hospital, and in an attempt to get her to steal drugs to help him end his life, he begins telling her a sprawling, emotionally intense fable. That story is loosely based on his own failed love affair, but Alexandria interferes with and shapes the story, which plays out on screen parallel to their own story. Tarsem took unprecedented steps to convince Untaru that Pace was a paraplegic during the shooting of the film, in order to get a more realistic performance out of her — and the collaboration on the story is real, captured with hidden cameras. It’s a strange, marvelous project, and it’s exciting to see it back in theaters.
Check MUBI’s playdate site for information about local screenings of The Fall.
