When I was in graduate school I took a writing class in which we were assigned to read The English Patient by Micheal Ondaatje. The book is about many things, but the story is driven by morphine; those who are addicted to it and the nurse that dispenses it to them. The story spills out like an addict's fever dream complete with vivid memories and strange meanderings that may or may not be real. I loved the book although in retrospect I'm glad it was assigned to me to read. It demanded patience to get through which I might not have taken otherwise. You can no more rush the book than you can a heroin addict.
So I was surprised and intrigued when I heard that Anthony Minghella was adapting the book for the big screen. How would he translate this tangled web of memory, dreams, and drug addiction to the big screen? The answer was to very delicately pick out the tragic love story woven through the book and place it front and center. It was certainly beautiful and well done, but it was not even close to the same experience as the book. The result was also, interestingly enough, a film that 100% of my male acquaintances consider the most horrifying, time-stopping, hellish chick flick experience of their lives. It is the hellish chick flick experience by which all others are judged. So how was Atonement? Well, it was harsh, but it was no English Patient!
I caught myself thinking of The English Patient while watching The Fall, namely what director Tarsem Singh might have done with that material. One thing of which I am certain is that the result would have made 100% of my male friends a whole lot happier. Ultimately though, I'm very glad that Tarsem chose to make this movie, which is his very own fervid web of memory, dreams, and drug addiction, brought to you straight up, just the way he wanted. Singh spent four years and millions of his own money to produce, write, and direct a film which Roger Ebert says is "so audacious that when Variety calls it a 'vanity project' you can only admire the man vain enough to make it."
The Fall is set in the 1920s in a Southern California hospital. Alexandria is a young girl convalescing from a fall which has broken her arm, but not her curiosity, or her ability to scurry around the wards of the hospital unnoticed. She is the child of migrant workers with at least a few tragedies in her background, and it becomes apparent that at least a few of the doctors and nurses are conspiring to keep her safely tucked away in the hospital, rather than let her go back to her family toiling in the orange groves. Freed to explore by their kind neglect, she meets Roy, a stunt man recovering from a back injury and other pains more profound.
Article comments
1 - Hal O'Brien
"The result was also, interestingly enough, a film that 100% of my male acquaintances consider the most horrifying, time-stopping, hellish chick flick experience of their lives."
What an odd and limited circle of male acquaintances you must have. This says far more about them than about The English Patient.