stories and even films which take as their starting point a particular character’s view before expanding into a more general and much larger view. The film is full of connections—aesthetic, emotional, narrative. We are able to see something of how stories are put together, how acts, feelings, and ideas, are seen and transformed, made motivational, made symbolic. I find that acceptable, I find it rich, but it seems to be what has repelled some people—who seem to resent the beauty, the largeness of vision, the jewel-like small island, the swimming elephant, the mountain of orange sand, the tree spirit, the tribal ritual, the dizzying labyrinth, the blue city, the exquisite costuming, the whirling dervishes, the birds that fly out of one man’s mouth, etc. Tarsem’s vision is too specific and too sophisticated for some tastes. It is, also, genuinely strange: when one of the characters in Roy’s fable is shot in the back with many arrows, he falls backward, his body resting on the arrows like a table top on table legs, an image of absurdity, beauty, and pain. How does one respond to that?

When I first saw the man shot then held aloft by arrows, a man who then offers reassuring words, I had reservations about the image and his words, they irritated me, but I now hear his words as attempts to reassure the girl regarding the acceptability of death, rather than the ability to tolerate extreme pain. How do we analyze the characters, their acts, and their words, in The Fall, and the images they form? Alexandria throws an orange at a priest—is that only a childish prank? The round shape of oranges have been said to suggest eternity, unbroken time, immortality, and the Christ child has been painted holding an orange. Is Alexandria meant to be a figure of a holy child, taking the position of the priest, tending to Roy’s soul? Alexandria pleads for Roy to allow his fantasy heroes a more optimistic destiny, pleads for him to have fait