It’s a great time to revisit Tarsem’s divisive 2006 masterpiece, The Fall

I’m saying all of this up front so you can manage your expectations, because what you’ll find if you are lucky enough to secure a copy (or you’re reading this in the future after Criterion screws its head on straight) is a bold and beautiful mess of a masterpiece, as intimate and personal as it is impossibly grand. Anchored in a 1915 Los Angeles hospital, the story follows paralyzed and bedridden stuntman Roy (the ever-delightful Lee Pace), who attracts the adulation of 5-year-old fellow patient Alexandria (first and only-time actress Catinca Untaru).

Seeking to end his life, Roy sees an opportunity to secure the necessary pills in his young and somewhat able-bodied protégé, one he exploits by spinning a fantastical yarn of love and revenge that ends up entrancing them both. The film flips between the muted reality of the hospital and the technicolor dream-world of Roy’s story, painted through a dizzying number of gorgeous on-location shots from around the globe, and some once-in-a-lifetime costume work by Eiko Ishioka. Just watch this one awesome transition and you’ll probably get the picture. (Warning: This might ruin lesser shots, like the Game Of Thrones dragon wings, for a little while after. It’s pretty tough to beat.)

But as stated above, The Fall is not without its detractors. Even though it features a healthy dose of swordplay, pyrotechnics, and elephant-based aquatic escapes, it’s about as far removed from the breezy antics of its modern counterpart as stunt performers currently are from award contention. (The Academy has really got to fix that one, huh?) The Fall is the self-serious masterwork of a self-serious auteur, one that cannot escape the weight of these labels even in its most light-hearted moments. Even then, these mostly occur at the beginning of the film, as Pace deftly acts around his young co-star’s mostly-improvised chatter; for better or worse, it’s all Tarsem by the end. In a 2008 interview with Minnesota Public Radio, he described the project as “a Western happening in India through a Ukrainian girl,” so that’s a pretty good taste of just how many balls are in the air here.

Another modern comparison is coming up soon, as we’ll soon see whatever the hell Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is when it premieres at Cannes later this month. Both films took a similar path to the screen, even if Coppola’s took approximately ten times as long to finally arrive. While he didn’t have any vineyards to sell off, Tarsem’s version of that financial sacrifice was to take commercial work for a while, but only in countries he also wanted to use for The Fall. That way, according to that MPR interview, he could cover costs along the way and fly actors out to shoot on location whenever his day job was done. That level of personal care is palpable in every line of dialogue and every set-piece that feels plucked straight out of a well-read child’s wildest fantasies. The film is often unwieldy, but so breathtaking in its earnestness that it’s hard not to buy in by the end. In her original 2008 review, A.V. Club writer Tasha Robinson called the project “pretentious to the point of laughability.” Later, she named it one of her top films of the year. Both can be true.

If all of this isn’t enough to at least pique your interest, this fact might put it over the edge. Tarsem is also the guy behind one of the greatest bits of pop culture history to ever grace our screens: I’m talking, of course, about the 2004 Pepsi commercial featuring Beyoncé, Britney Spears, and Pink singing “We Will Rock You” in full gladiator garb at the Colosseum. If you’re not at least a little bit curious about a feature-length film from that beautiful brain, then we have nothing left to say to each other.