Hard-to-find 2006 pic The Fall is back in a dazzling 4K restoration. It’s easy to see why the film has gained such a devoted cult following, writes Katie Parker—it’s hard to think of anything quite like it.
Harvey Weinstein made it just 15 minutes into the Toronto International Film festival premiere of The Fall before he walked out, or so the story goes. The now disgraced movie mogul—whose outfit the Weinstein Company had, until then, been on track to distribute the film—made no secret of his distaste for it, and neither did many critics. A bold, ambitious and incredibly sincere “fairy tale for grown-ups”, as director Tarsem Singh (The Cell) put it, the festival ended with no offers for distribution for the film, setting in motion a nearly 20-year saga that has seen The Fall emerge as one of cinema’s hardest to find cult classics—until now.
In the wake of 2006’s TIFF debacle and Weinstein’s very public rejection, it took a full two years for the film to get a theatrical release. A release on physical media came and went and, despite support from movers and shakers like David Fincher, Spike Jonze and Roger Ebert, The Fall seemed destined to be forgotten by Hollywood, critics, and moviegoers alike.
Yet something about the visually spectacular and deeply affecting action-adventure epic refused to be lost to the sands of time. In the years following The Fall’s troubled release, the film slowly but surely acquired a reverence and infamy among cinephiles that travelled almost entirely by word of mouth. Never available on any streaming or rental service, demand for second-hand DVDs and Blu-rays went through the roof, regularly fetching hundreds of dollars in online auctions from film buffs desperate to get their hands on a copy.
Now, nearly two decades on from its release, The Fall is effectively reborn with the long-awaited release of a dazzling 4K restoration marking the first time the film will be available to stream or be seen in cinemas for many people—and opening the door for a whole new audience to witness Singh’s extraordinary vision.
Loosely based on the 1981 Bulgarian film Yo Ho Ho and taking inspiration from Singh’s upbringing in India as well childhood visits to Iran, The Fall takes place in the confines of a hospital in Los Angeles circa 1915, where bedridden and paralysed silent movie stuntman Roy Walker (Lee Pace) forms an unlikely friendship with Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), a little Romanian girl with a broken arm.
Bored, lonely and each nursing wounds other than the physical, the pair form an instant bond as Roy regales Alexandria with extraordinary tales of bandits travelling the world—stories she imagines in vivid, technicolor detail and in which she casts the ragtag collection of fellow patients and nurses around her. As reality and fiction bend and blur, it becomes clear that Roy’s fantastic tale belies a sadness that he may not survive, and together he and Alexandria’s relationship becomes inextricably linked with stories they tell.
Epic, grandiose and never even slightly subtle, watching The Fall in 2025 it seems clear that it could never have flown under the radar for long. Ebert aptly (and favourably) described it as an ”extravagant visual orgy”, and as Roy and Alexandria’s story comes to life, the film becomes kaleidoscopically vivid, with Singh’s eye for colour and composition turning each frame into a work of art.
Filmed over four years, across a whopping 24 countries including France, Indonesia, South Africa, Italy, Argentina, Czech Republic, and Fiji, the production was as grandiose an affair as the film, and just as unorthodox, with the majority of the crew—including young actress Untaru—under the impression that Pace really was paralysed. Working off an uncompleted script, with scenes between Pace and Untaru largely unscripted, the result is an extraordinarily naturalistic and endearing performance from Untaru—who, discovered by Singh at four and a half, was given a year to learn English so that she could participate in the film.
Weinstein’s criticism of The Fall, according to Singh, was that he didn’t understand the plot—and to be sure as the fantastic story within the story conflates with the harsh reality in which Roy and Alexandria find themselves, there is a lot going on. What’s more, the film’s complete and utter earnestness does demand a suspension not of disbelief, but of cynicism—a requirement that can exhaust as well as enchant.
Yet even for detractors, it is easy to see why The Fall has gained such a devoted cult following—it’s hard to think of another film quite like it.
That it has for so long been such a hard film to track down may have added to its mystique, but restored in glorious 4K (and approximately two minutes longer than the original theatrical release) Singh’s film is ambitious, majestic and indulgent in the best way possible, literally standing the test of time—and more than ready to be devoured by a new generation of cinephiles.
