The Fall

Tarsem Singh bought the rights to the 1981 Bulgarian film Yo Ho Ho with money from directing commercials, then shot over 4 years in more than 20 countries with almost no computer effects. For the blue houses of Jodhpur he trusted paint rather than a later colour pass, handing it out so residents repainted their walls. In the hospital scenes Tarsem asked Lee Pace to stay paralysed off camera too and use a wheelchair on set; only a few crew knew. The point was that Catinca Untaru should believe it; found in Romania at 4 and a half, she needed over a year to learn English. The bed scenes were shot through 3 holes in the curtains, cameras running continuously. Her reading the E in Roy’s note for morphine as a 3, and bringing 3 pills, came from a real misreading Tarsem wrote in. On the last day of the South African shoot the crew learned Pace could walk. David Fincher and Spike Jonze took no part in the making, only lending their names as presenters. A good fit if you want the fable to darken with the teller’s despair while the child fills it with faces from her ward. Not for viewers troubled by a man using a child to fetch his pills, the engine of the plot.