We interview filmmaker Tarsem Singh about his self-funded epic film The Fall (2006), which has been newly restored in 4K for a streaming premiere on MUBI worldwie on September 27. Singh discusses the film’s divisive response, a years-long battle to release the film, and its passionate cult following.
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It’s difficult to talk about Tarsem Singh’s The Fall without addressing the extraordinary story of its creation. Back in the 2000s, Singh had a long-gestating passion project he couldn’t get funded. It was the story of a hospitalized young Romanian girl, Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), in 1920s Los Angeles. She meets injured stuntman Roy (Lee Pace), who tells her a fantastical story about five men on a quest to take down an evil Governor who rules their world. At the time, Catinca Untaru was an eight-year-old Romanian girl who had never acted before (and hasn’t starred in a feature since; Lee Pace was a relatively unknown actor as his breakout role in Pushing Daisies was still to come.
After years of development and rejection, Singh decided to make it himself. With a successful career as a director of commercials, music videos, and one prior feature (2000’s The Cell), Singh spent all his money to fund and produce The Fall. This process took over four years and bankrupted him with its $30 million budget.
Tarsem Singh’s unconventional approach to making The Fall
The structure of The Fall required Singh to take an unconventional approach to filming. The film cross-cuts between scenes at the hospital, where Roy tells Alexandria his epic tale, and Roy’s story as Alexandria imagines it. There was no script for those fantasy sequences. To keep Untaru’s performance as natural as possible, Singh had her and Pace improvise their scenes together. After filming the hospital scenes, Singh spent years filming the fantasy parts shaped by those improvised scenes.
To pull off the grand saga of Roy’s story, Singh filmed across 24 countries, from deserts to castles, tropical islands to world monuments, and more. Sometimes, Singh made savvy use of his commercial jobs to ensure he would get the footage he needed; when he had to film a commercial in an exotic locale that could work for The Fall, he would hold the crew back for several days to fly out his film’s cast and shoot what he needed.
The final result is the sort of personal, singular filmmaking that’s rarely executed on such a large scale. Untaru’s and Pace’s strong, naturalistic performances keep the emotions foregrounded, while Singh makes full use of his skills at stylish image-making to create gorgeous, colourful visuals with the help of cinematographer Colin Watkinson and costume designer Eiko Ishioka.
While the stunning imagery evokes the childlike wonder of its protagonist, Singh takes The Fall’s story to dark and tragic places that make it more suitable for adults. Singh’s eccentric blend of tones is all his own because no one else would invest in it. Every second of The Fall is a risk, a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence of an artist realizing their vision with immense resources and no outside input. This makes it all the more exciting when Singh’s risks succeed.
Distribution challenges for Tarsem Singh’s The Fall (which he discusses in this interview)
Unfortunately, The Fall’s struggles didn’t end after it pulled off the feat of merely existing. It premiered in 2006 at the Toronto International Film Festival, where critics panned the film and distributors wouldn’t touch it. The Fall finally got a North American release in 2008, partly thanks to the support of directors like Spike Jonze and David Fincher. It gained a small but passionate following.
But over the years, the film has languished. Its home video release went out of print, and it was never available to watch via streaming. Singh, who retains the rights to the film he calls his baby, worked on a 4K restoration only to find that companies he pitched a re-release to, like Criterion, weren’t interested. Luckily, arthouse streamer MUBI came to the rescue, announcing that the new 4K restoration of The Fall would get a near-global release on its platform this year.
I spoke to Tarsem Singh several hours before the restoration had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. With less than ten minutes to discuss a film with decades of history behind it, Singh was affable and excited to discuss The Fall, the changes he made for this new release, and what it means for a new generation of people to discover his film as it makes its streaming debut.
In the 2000s, you faced an uphill battle to release The Fall. MUBI will release this new restoration, but you’ve been open about the challenges of getting distributors interested in re-releasing your film. How did it feel going back in for another round of fighting to get your film distributed?
Tarsem Singh: You ask the right question because most people ask why I feel it was so tough to make this movie. And I say, “No, that’s the only way this movie could have been made.” That was never the battle.
I wasn’t ready when we brought it to Toronto and not a single person would take it, even for free. They would not release it. I’d spent all my money [from] 20+ years of working in really lucrative business and advertising, made the movie, and nobody wanted it.
I had to work for another two years to get it out in a handful of cinemas so that some fan base would develop and people would remember it. And still, nobody would pick it up 20 years later.
So it was great that a friend introduced me to Efe [Cakarel, CEO of MUBI], and it was like love at first sight. When I met Efe, he realized a strong cult fan base wanted this to be released. So we worked out something, and now here we are
When you revisited your film for the restoration process, did you discover or rediscover anything about The Fall?
Tarsem Singh: When we made it, there was a big problem: nobody wanted it for two years. People thought strategically that it was good for me to say some critics didn’t like it because it was in a long state, [so I] recut the film. I took out a minute and 40 seconds. One of those scenes should have stayed in the movie. I took out that scene and changed the title [card] up front, which was also a mistake.
The restoration wasn’t a problem because when we made the movie, I was so unlimitedly thinking this would actually live forever. At that particular time, only two movies had ever been finished in 4K. One was The Fall, and the second was this small film called, uhh, Iron Man. And then, somehow, this fool thought that his film was an equivalent, and I made it.
I thought it would be easy to find [the 4K files]. We could not find them. After a lot of searching for three or four years, we found an unfinished 4K without some of the special effects. We worked on that in Montreal and finally finished it. I put the scenes [I’d removed earlier] back in. I think the [now out-of-print] Blu-ray had the deleted scenes, but they were never finished properly. [For the restoration] I finished them properly and put them in.
There was never a debate in your mind about preserving the film as it originally was?
Tarsem Singh: I hate saying Director’s Cut. Zack [Snyder’s] is a very good friend, and it works for him to re-release and have different cuts. I don’t have those. I got to make the film exactly how I wanted it. It’s just that when I got scared, and nobody would even take it for free, I could lie and say it’s a changed film when it was a minute and forty seconds less. All that stuff was something that always existed. We just cleaned it up and put it out.
Your film is like lightning in a bottle. Would a film like The Fall be possible today?
Tarsem Singh: It could never get made, even when I made it. Everybody who had any muscle then, [like] David Fincher, tried to arrange all the meetings for me. And anywhere I would go, it was a film that could never be made. It shouldn’t have been made.
I was obsessed and had a particular reference in mind that I had to go and make this. There was a very tentative outline I gave to everyone to get [funding], and I would say a child is going to make it. I said I would tell the stories through her box about the things the child had stolen. And they said, “But where’s the script?” I said, “You don’t want to read it because it’s about 20 pages long, and the child will make the story.” And then, “Where are you shooting it?” I had 28 countries and said, “However many I can get into.” It’s all those kinds of answers that no financier could ever finance.
It just took an idiot with a broken heart. I had made all this money in advertising. I was going to live with this girl, and she dumped me. And I thought, I don’t know what this money is for. My head is gone because [the film] took a lot of preparation. I think it was 26 years of prepping it, 19 years of location scouting, and nine years of looking for the child. And then I found the child, and I just said, “Sell everything.”
Do you still keep in touch with your lead actress, Catinca Untaru, who is all grown up now? Have you spoken to her recently now that the restoration is coming out?
Tarsem Singh: Yes, she’s coming here [to the premiere]! I’m bringing her here, she has a boyfriend and I said I’ll fly both of you. I meet her now and then in London. She’s not in London because she’s moved to another part of England up north. She works at Waterstones. She has a regular job, and her hobby is professional pole dancing. I meet her every couple of years. She’s coming here with her boyfriend, and I’ll meet her again today. I always call her my Russian tank; she’ll remind me and say, “No, your Romanian tank.” So my Romanian tank is coming here today.
Over the years, you must have received every range of responses to The Fall from audiences. How do you feel about people who will discover your film now?
Tarsem Singh: My biggest thing was to make it and make sure somebody can see it. I never cared about the reaction. It’s made for the people who like it. And the people who hate it, it’s okay. It’s not your film. The people think it’s okay, you fuck off. You can say it’s shit; I’m OK with that. And if it’s the best thing since sliced bread, I love you.
More recent 4K restorations like Tarsem Singh’s The Fall & interviews with their directors
Listen to our podcast interview with Mapantsula director Oliver Schmitz about finishing this landmark South African film for the first time with the restoration.
Read our career profile of Patricia Rozema on the occasion of the 4K restorations of several of her films (including White Room and When Night is Falling).
Listen to our podcast discussion of the 4K restoration of Mike Leigh’s Naked.
