Lee Pace’s “The Fall” is getting a 4K re-release courtesy of streaming platform MUBI.
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The film, which was released in 2006, stars Pace as a hospital patient whose imagination inspires a globe-trotting tale. The official synopsis reads: In Los Angeles circa the 1920s, a little immigrant girl (Catinca Untaru) in a hospital recovering from a fall, strikes up a friendship with a bedridden man (Pace). He captivates her with a whimsical story that removes her far from the hospital doldrums into the exotic landscape of her imagination.
The feature was filmed over 4 years in 20 different international locations. Tarsem Singh, known just as Tarsem, directed the film, which was his sophomore release after 2000’s “The Cell.” He later went on to helm “The Immortals” (2011), “Mirror Mirror” (2014), “Self/less” (2015), and Dear Jassi (2023). Tarsem also directed the 10-part mini-TV series “Emerald City.”
“The Fall” was originally presented by David Fincher and Spike Jonze, with a script from Dan Gilroy and Nico Soultanakis, as Deadline reported. “The Fall” premiered at TIFF and has not been widely available on streaming.
“The Fall” 4K restoration will premiere at the Locarno Film Festival. The Match Factory is handling sales for the rest of the world while MUBI will distribute in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Benelux, Turkey, and India.
“The Fall” will be available to stream in 4K on MUBI starting September 27.
After “The Fall,” Pace went on to star in AMC’s “Halt and Catch Fire,” “Foundation,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “The Hobbit,” and “Pushing Daisies,” among other projects.
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Tarsem told Screen Anarchy that “The Fall” was “one of those indulgent projects where I spent all my money, sold everything, and just said, ‘I’m going to make this movie.'”
He added of the indie, “Because nobody wanted to buy it, I spent another two years working and released it myself. So, I’ve always had the rights. But after so many years, people can’t see it. It’s not available anywhere.Now, I’m finally trying to work it out. It’ll probably be on MUBI. Currently, we are working with Locarno to reintroduce it. I keep getting letters from people saying they’re having to pay $300 to buy the Blu-ray, so we just made a 4K version. It just finished, and we did add two scenes, making it only a minute and 20 seconds longer.”
The slightly longer cut includes a different piece of dialogue from the original, as Tarsem explained.
“There was one line that I wish I had not changed. In retrospect, when people go to an arthouse film, they get it immediately. But when people saw it back then, they didn’t realize it was from a child’s perspective,” he said. “Initially, it was supposed to start with ‘Once upon a time in Los Angeles,’ signaling a grown-up’s fairy tale, perhaps remembered by an older person. When I tried using the voice of an older person in the beginning, it felt clichéd, like ‘Titanic.’ It wasn’t that type of film, so I couldn’t use that voice. So I left it out, and people found the story naïve. In retrospect, I realized I should have kept that title. Tarantino was right with ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ — it signifies an alternative reality. It sets the tone correctly. So, I put that back in because it was what the film needed.”
Additional Locarno 2024 premieres include “By the Stream,” Ramon Zürcher’s “The Sparrow in the Chimney,” and Wang Bing’s second “Youth” trilogy installment, “Youth (Hard Times).”
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