The Fall is getting a few extra scenes as part of its long overdue 4K restoration

The updated version of Tarsem Singh’s magnum opus will screen at the Locarno Film Festival before making its way to MUBI September 27

By Emma Keates  |  August 8, 2024 | 2:59pm
Photo: GOOGLY Films, LLC
Film News The Fall
The Fall is getting a few extra scenes as part of its long overdue 4K restoration

We’re not going to take all the credit for the long overdue resurgence of Tarsem Singh’s The Fall, but this author did say that it would be a great time to revisit the divisive 2006 magnum opus all the way back in May before any of this was announced. Luckily for all of us, that project just got a lot easier. For reasons unknown, The Fall was not available digitally anywhere for years, leading hungry cinephiles and Lee Pace fanatics to spend upwards of $75 (at least) to snag a Blu-ray or DVD copy from eBay. Now, all fans new and old will have to do is subscribe to Mubi—a small price to pay for an incredibly moving film full of stunning costumes and imaginative scenes, all from the mind of the guy who directed the Beyoncé, Britney Spears, and Pink gladiator Pepsi ad. “People were buying it for $200-$300 on Amazon or eBay and complaining about it,” Singh told Variety in a recent interview about the film. “I realized I had to take care of it.” 

As if this wasn’t enough, the film is also getting a 4K restoration to somehow bring all those vibrant colors to life even more than they already were. Shot over four years in approximately 24 countries, The Fall is a 1920s-set “grown-up’s fairy tale” about a paralyzed stuntman (Lee Pace) who weaves an epic story for a young girl (Catinca Untaru) he meets in a Los Angeles hospital. Singh worked on the restoration himself, along with a team of producers and technical supervisors, who had to track down all of the original 4K files after they had been scattered to different production companies, touch up some specific visual effects that had never been finished in the 4K resolution, and then, of course, restore it all.

And as if that wasn’t enough, Singh also added approximately two minutes of film to his original theatrical cut by reinserting two scenes he regretted leaving out the first time around. Big news, The Fall-heads: we’re finally getting a bit more of the Stony Faced Priest from one of the greatest movie transitions of all time. “The poor guy traveled with me around India for two months, and I gave him the ugliest haircut in the world to match a mountain for a particular dissolve. And then the scene I’d made his haircut for, I took it out,” Singh said. This writer is almost as excited to learn the backstory of that haircut as she is to re-experience the film as a whole.

It also may not just be The Fall that gets its moment in the sun. The director is also in talks to restore his 2000 debut The Cell, which starred Jennifer Lopez. For now, however, attendees of the Locarno Film Festival will get the first taste of The Fall in 4K when it premieres on August 8. It will be available for the rest of the world on MUBI September 27.

 
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