The Fall

The Fall is a 2006 adventure fantasy film directed and co-written by Tarsem and starring Lee Pace, Catinca Untaru, and Justine Waddell. It is based on the screenplay of the 1981 Bulgarian film Yo Ho Ho by Valeri Petrov. Its costume design is by Eiko Ishioka. The film was released in the UK and US in 2008, and earned $3.7 million worldwide. Plot In 1915 Los Angeles, stuntman Roy Walker is hospitalized, bedridden and paralyzed (possibly permanently) after jumping off a bridge for a stunt in his first film. He meets Alexandria, a young Romanian-born patient in the hospital who is recovering from a broken arm, and begins to tell her a story about her namesake, Alexander the Great. Alexandria is told she has to leave, but Roy promises to tell her an epic tale if she returns the next day. The next morning, as Roy spins his tale of fantasy, Alexandria's imagination brings his characters to life. Roy's tale is about five heroes: a silent Indian warrior, a muscular ex-slave named Otta Benga, an Italian explosives expert called Luigi, Charles Darwin alongside a pet monkey named Wallace, and a masked swashbuckling bandit. An evil ruler named Governor Odious has committed an offense against each of the five, and they all seek revenge. The heroes are later joined by a sixth hero, a mystic. Alexandria vividly imagines her friends and people around her appearing as the characters in Roy's story. Although Roy develops affection for Alexandria, he also has an ulterior motive: to trick her into stealing morphine from the hospital pharmacy. Roy intends to use the morphine to commit suicide because the woman he loves has left him for the actor for whom he provided the stunt footage. However, Alexandria returns with only three pills. Roy asks what happened to the rest of the pills in the bottle, and Alexandria says she threw all but three of them down the toilet, having mistaken the "E" on the piece of paper Roy gave her for a "3". The stories become a collaborative tale to which Alexandria also contributes. Alexandria herself becomes a character: while Roy is the masked bandit, she is his daughter.