The plot is simple. A young man who was doing a stunt for a silent "flicker" crippled himself, and the damage may be irreparable. He is recuperating in a hospital where a five-year-old migrant picker is also recovering from a fall; her arm in a cast. When he learns that her name is Alexandria, he tells her one of the stories about Alexander the Great. She doesn't think much of her namesake, so the ironically named Roy Walker promises to tell her another story, one about bandits. What begins as a pastime to beguile some moments takes on a multi-layered life. Alexandria's interruptions shape the narrative, and she introduces key characters - including herself - into the adventure. But when Roy figures out that he may never walk again, and that his fiance has abandoned him for the leading man, he tricks Alexandria into stealing morphine, so he can "sleep." He refuses to continue the story unless she does. (The R rating is for the suicide attempt; there is no sex; most of the violence happens at a remove, and what is shown is as stylized as a kabuki performance.) Coyote must be Roy's guardian, for not once, not twice, but three times his efforts are thwarted. But it is Alexandria who ransoms his life the third time, with yet another fall. She endures a nightmare of pain and terror, and Roy is shocked out of his spiraling self-pity.

What makes this movie utterly unique is how we see everything through Alexandria's perceptions: the places, people, and events around her, the story of the bandits' quest for vengeance against Governor Odious, her nightmare. It is her imagination and her partial comprehension of adults that we are shown. When Roy describes one bandit as an Indian married to a beautiful squaw, little Alexandria is visualizing the man and his wife as Hindustani. Her favorite hospital nurse, the fruit picker, the ice man, Roy's friends and enemies all people the story that Roy is telling as it unfolds in her mind. Even the ordinary world is full of frights and wonders for Alexandria; and when Tarsem Singh and the Cray Brothers are directing the visuals, you enter her world, a Dante to her Virgil.

In the midst of the glory and terror, there is humor as well. Bandit Charles Darwin has a pet monkey named Wallace that has all the good ideas Darwin takes credit for; when Alexandria needs to go to the bathroom, the fair heroine Evelyn starts contorting her legs and hopping up and down; and a distraught Roy resorts to the logic of a five-year-old.

This is a movie to see when the veil between worlds is thin, when you can cross over to wonderland. You have never seen anything like The Fall. ~~ Chris Paige