I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #142 – The Fall (2006, dir. Tarsem)

In 1991, Tarsem directed the most popular and acclaimed music video of its era, R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” and helped catapult the band into pop stardom. Although R.E.M. soon became a household name Tarsem, a chief architect of their breakthrough success, would go on to experience a level of relative obscurity that persists to this day. With “Losing My Religion” Tarsem ushered in an unparalleled period of visual creativity, nonlinear narrative, and unorthodox style that would transform MTV into a proving ground for innovative directors on the rise. David Fincher and Spike Jonze are just two of Tarsem’s contemporaries who benefited from his efforts and turned MTV tenures into flourishing careers as film directors, so it stands to reason that these two “present” Tarsem’s sophomore feature-length film, The Fall. With this film, Tarsem seizes upon the considerable potential for visual storytelling he first demonstrated with “Losing My Religion” and creates an engrossing meditation on storytelling, friendship, imagination, and redemption.

Appropriately enough, Tarsem begins his tale of a storyteller with the statement, “Los Angeles - Once Upon a Time.” As these words fade, a breathtaking, silent, slow motion segment shot in black and white details the chaotic aftermath of a terrible accident during the filming of a movie in the early days of Hollywood. The next scene opens in sepia-tinged color on a quiet hospital where we meet Alexandria, the precocious five year old daughter of Romanian migrant workers who broke her arm picking oranges in the nearby groves. Alexandria should be in school or playing with friends, but instead wanders the halls of the hospital with her awkward cast and goes where her curiosity takes her. Soon, Alexandria’s explorations bring her to Roy, the stuntman injured in the film’s opening segment, as he begins a slow, troublesome recovery. Roy captures Alexandria’s interest with a vivid, outlandish story and asks her to come back and visit him soon so he can keep telling her the story. Alexandria returns the next day and their relationship begins to deepen while Roy’s fantastic story grows a life of its own with Alexandria’s imagination. Tarsem spent four years creating Roy and Alexandria’s sprawling, boundless narrative while traveling the world and filming dozens of the planet’s most gorgeous and spellbinding locations. While the images of the story certainly entice the eye, The Fall’s potent emotional resonance derives from the relationship between Alexandria and Roy. Lee Pace delivers an unforgettably vulnerable and textured performance as Roy and shares an uncanny chemistry with Cantica Untaru who brings a wondrous, guileless charm to her portrayal of Alexandria.

“Losing My Religion” and The Fall both bounce between a lush, old-fashioned setting for their principal subjects and a fervently stylized, dreamlike realm that balances the sacred and the profane as beautiful images inspired by classical masterpieces exist alongside slapstick comedy and bizarre anachronisms. After a flawed and peculiar debut, The Cell (a now forgotten Jennifer Lopez procedural from 2000), Tarsem chose to adapt an obscure 1981 Bulgarian film, Yo Ho Ho, for his next project. In the adaptation that became The Fall, Tarsem wisely switched the actor’s profession from the stage to the silent film era allowing him to reflect on the formative years of cinema with a mix affection, awe, and concern. With The Fall, Tarsem not only achieves the greatest statement of his wholly unique artistic vision, but also creates a movie that reminds of us of the irresistible magic of incredible filmmaking.  

-          John Parsell

Fables of the Reconstruction: R.E.M.

The simple truth is that R.E.M. saved my life. I first heard them when I was in junior high, on a new wave radio show I found when I was spinning the dial on a Sunday afternoon. They played “Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)”, and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard, and I begged my mom to take me out to the mall to buy a copy of their debut EP, Chronic Town. Their first full-length LP, Murmur, came out less than a year later and I snatched it up right away, and scratched it all to hell lifting and dropping the needle with my thumb over and over again to listen to “Radio Free Europe” and “Sitting Still” nonstop. For the former, I’d jump around the room playing air guitar, and for the latter I’d hold an invisible microphone to my mouth, close my eyes and try to blend in with harmony on the chorus – “I-I-I believe” – and waves of well-being would cascade up and down my spine. It was like being hugged by God.

            Then things changed very quickly for me. My mom got a job in Denver, and when I boarded the bus for my first day of school in the big city, everyone laughed at me. This was a time when every teen movie had a pathetic nerd in it, and with my big horned-rim glasses, I looked the part. Laughter followed me through the halls of school, and the other kids called me “Waldorf” and “Melvin.” I had to do something about it, so I went punk. I made my mom drive me to Wax Trax to buy a bunch of T-shirts and I took my jeans and ground them against the pavement in front of our house to make holes in the knees and I stopped combing my hair. I started smoking pot. My buddy Andy and I formed a punk band called Rellik (“killer” spelled backward). Andy played guitar and I gyrated and screamed. We went without a drummer and bass player for the better part of the summer, and when we finally found a couple competent players we celebrated by smoking a whole bunch of weed that I’m pretty sure was laced with PCP, which turned out to be a lot more than my 16-year-old psyche could handle. While the band played, I sat on the dining room table in Andy’s house staring at my reflection in a plate-glass window, watching it melt and transform into versions of myself at all the different ages of my life – little boy, teenager, old man – and at each stage I was a pathetic fool. The nightmare didn’t end when I came down. I started my sophomore year literally unable to bear the sight of my own shadow. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror, couldn’t stand the sound of my voice, and I tried not to be alone for any significant stretch of time out of fear of what I might do to myself. The only things that brought relief were music, and writing and making art. I pulled out the banged up copy of Murmur that I’d neglected during my punk-only phase, played “Sitting Still” incessantly, wailing along with such determination that the “I-I-I believe!” chorus began to ring true.

            I picked up a copy of Reckoning, and it was a godsend. I could not stop listening to it. When I was at school or away from of my record player for more than a few hours, I’d start to crave it, especially the beginning, the way “Harborcoat” burst into its driving beat and jangling guitar riff and the soaring harmony of the chorus. The vocals are so strong on that album that even when you’re not singing along it feels as though the words and notes are rising out of your solar plexus. R.E.M. played at Macky Auditorium that fall, and I drove up there from Aurora in my little blue bug, listening to Peter Buck guest deejay on KBCO. I remember he played a tune by The Band, and the deejay asked him why, and he said something like, “Because they’re the great American band,” and I made a mental note to check them out. Every day, I’d listen to Reckoning constantly and draw or write stories for the school newspaper, where I’d struck up a friendship with the editors, a couple of sexy senior girls named Allison and Rachel. They had good taste in music, too, and Rachel shared my love for R.E.M., and pretty soon she was listening to it with me in my room, and we’d stop making out only long enough to flip the record over. She was my first girlfriend, and I regained my ability to look myself in the mirror the moment we first kissed.

            I wish I could say I’ve been a loyal R.E.M. fan ever since, but I abandoned them my junior year, when I went all-in for acid rock. They rolled through Boulder again in autumn of that year, right at the cusp of my transformation, and a friend of mine scored front-row seats. I went on two hits of acid, and I kept wishing that Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix would step onto the stage. It wasn’t until I started buying vinyl again that I got back into them. On Record Store Day this year, I picked up a copy of Reckoning for the nostalgia of it and I discovered all over again that it’s an amazing record. When I moved to Georgia in late July, I found myself listening to it a lot, along with Fables of the Reconstruction, and staring out the windows at the kudzu vines and the magnolia trees, feeling the spirit of this great and strange state brought to life in this gorgeous music. So I got all their other records from the 80s, and I’ve been listening to them all weekend, reliving a decade of music that I missed the first time around, thrilled at the prospect of the new life that lies ahead.   

R.E.M. - Reckoning Deluxe Edition

My feelings about R.E.M. have changed so much over the years. When this reissue showed up on my desk it reminded me of my feelings for them when they first started. At the time they seemed like a huge breath of relief after the angst of punk and the chilling effects of new wave. They were creating rock that felt warm and meaningful, and was in touch with some very basic fundamentals: musicianship, songwriting ability and melodic sensibility. I just adored those first four albums, and I remember seeing them live at increasingly large venues starting with the 200 seat Blue Note in Boulder. By the time they played at the C.U. Events center on Halloween to a sold-out crowd of proto-indie hipsters it seemed like they were destined for greatness. And they were… kind of. Unfortunately, most of their modern albums have left me pretty cold. They can still write hits, and their songs will get in your head and stay there, but they have lost that organic sense of self-discovery that informed their early albums. Going to their shows is an even more alienating experience. They have become, for lack of a better word, huge. I find it harder to embrace immensity than intimacy - who doesn’t?

This Deluxe Edition will take you right back to those heady days in every way. The album itself sounds better than ever. It’s hard to pick a favorite of the first four, but this could be their best batch of songs. Michael Stipe’s willful, arty lyrical obscurity never worked to better effect than on songs like: “So. Central Rain,” "(don’t go back to) Rockville” or “Time After Time.” The deluxe part comes in the form of an entire concert from the era. Disc two is comprised of a 1984 radio broadcast three months after the album was released. The band is firing on all cylinders, and shows no sign of fatigue with the new material. All the songs from Reckoning as well as all the material from their brilliant debut Murmur shine like musical gold. It’s hard to listen to this show and not be swept away on a cloud of nostalgia for this period, when the band’s future seemed so wide open and they seemed to be playing for their lives.

-- Paul Epstein