Young Romanian Actress Catinca Untaru in "The fall"
About
Title: The Fall
Release date: 9 September 2006
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Director: Tarsem Singh
Writing credits: Dan Gilroy, Nico Soultanakis, Tarsem Singh, Valeri Petrov
Production Companies: Googly Films, Absolute Entertainment (II), Deep Films, Radical Media, Tree Top Films Inc.
A movie worth the mention when talking about beautiful cinematography is undoubtedly The Fall. Directed by Tarsem Singh, the movie came out in 2006 and it depicts a story as told by an injured stuntman trough the imagination of a young girl in a hospital in the outskirts of Los Angeles in the 1920s. The child, Alexandria is played by Romanian actress Catinca Untaru. She is the first Romanian child to have starred in an international movie. When the movie was released, she was nine years old. It is never mentioned in the movie that she is Romanian, but it is obvious by her accent that she is not American, so as it’s something unspecified, I think it’s open for interpretation.
The whole movie is mostly an homage to unconstrained imagination. The young girl lacks worldly knowledge and as such, the way she imagines the events of the story is otherworldly and unbound by any realistic limitations. The movie was shot in over four years and in twenty-eight different countries; each second of the movie creates a beautiful and mesmerizing tableau. While watching the movie, I admit I lost track of the plot (not that there was much to begin with) and was mostly just admiring the way the movie was shot, how each scene was framed along with the eccentric costumes and makeup.
While it is often very interesting to see what an informed and knowledgeable mind can come up with, sometimes it is more impressive to see or admire the imagination of someone without the proper knowledge. A very good quote in relation to this is given by the youtube channel CineFix in their “Top 10 Most Beautiful Movies of All Time” video; the imagination and work of a child is “free from the limitations of experience.” The movie "The Fall" makes the list but the quote is in relation to a different movie, the quote itself is very inspiring and brings forth the importance of self-education and self-appreciation.
Catinca was lovable all throughout the movie and she had won the audition against many other children, her lack of previous experience and knowledge brings forth the idea of innocence, naivety and different sets of values as she sometimes seems to lose interest in the story, showing how children often have a different area of interest. I believe that to the movie makers, her nationality was not important initially as it was not a central theme to the movie but as time went on, and the fact that the scenes where she was present were chartered around her, it definitely did not remain an unimportant fact.
