The trailer for Tarsem's "The Fall," playing May 23 and 25 at SIFF and opening in limited release May 30, contains a single press quote with a single word in it. The quote is from eminent movie critic Roger Ebert, and the single word is "MAGNIFICENT."

The review in which Ebert used that word has yet to be published, so I can't speak to the specific context in which it was used. But knowing what I know of Ebert's love of film as a purely visual artistic medium -- one that can provide nourishment for our dreams and fire for our imaginations -- I think I can guess. "The Fall" is a banquet of breathtaking, dreamlike imagery. And if the story sometimes goes flat (that may have been Ebert's next word on the subject), there's always another magnificent image to compensate for it.

It starts in harsh, high-contrast black and white, altogether fitting for a movie set in the infancy of film itself. We see the aftermath of an accident on the set of a silent Western, a fall that has left a horse dead and its rider, Roy Walker ("Pushing Daisies" star Lee Pace), paralyzed in a Los Angeles hospital. He's suicidal, morphine-addicted and plainly wants to follow that horse off the picture.

One day, a chance wind brings Alexandria (precocious 9-year-old actress Cantica Untaru) to his room. Alexandria is confined to the children's wing after she fell picking oranges with her family, and she's bored to tears; she keeps herself entertained by writing notes to pretty Nurse Evelyn (Justine Waddell), throwing oranges at the hospital priest and stealing eucharist wafers. To keep himself from thinking too much -- and with an ulterior motive that will ultimately prove ruinous for the both of them -- he begins to tell her a story.

"There were five bandits," he begins. One is an "Indian," which he describes as a Native American but which Alexandria imagines as, well, an Indian from India; one is an Italian "explosives expert"; one is an ex-slave whom the girl pictures as a proud African warrior; one is Charles Darwin, whom Alexandria dresses as a 1980s pop star; and their leader is "the Masked Bandit," whom Alexandria casts as Roy himself.

Most of "The Fall" happens in Alexandria's head, which is a place I'd kind of like to live in. Tarsem, formerly a director of music videos and maker of the pretty, if vapid, J-Lo thriller "The Cell," piles on astonishing vistas, outlandish costumes, vivid colors and clever shot compostions until your head begins to swim. Here you'll see an underwater shot of a swimming elephant, a city painted entirely in cobalt blue, a flaming tree that produces a warrior-mystic and too much more to describe. Roy's story may be confusing and incoherent -- he is an addict, after all -- but the girl, and Tarsem, pick up his slack.

Tarsem shot "The Fall" on location in more than two dozen countries, using very little CGI, and he frames his shots with a painter's eye. The resulting film evokes memories of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," Alejandro Jodorowsky's "The Holy Mountain," Jeunet and Caro's "The City of Lost Children" and many other like-minded visual epics. Unfortunately, the story backing up the film's visuals is spotty -- second-rate "Princess Bride" -- and is too dark for kids and too simplistic for grown-up film geeks. You really have to commit to the visual aspects of Tarsem's film to enjoy it.

Fortunately, that is blessedly easy to do. For several days after I screened the film, I had dreams of brigands traversing Escher-like staircases and of Alexander The Great wandering caramel-colored deserts. And I felt nourished by them.

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