My Favorite Movie of All Time (Starring a 27-Year-Old Lee Pace) Is Finally Available on Streaming

The Fall follows the story of two in-patients at a hospital in Southern California in 1915. The first is Roy Walker, played by 27-year-old Lee Pace, a Hollywood stuntman recovering after a stunt gone wrong that may have left him paralyzed. The second is Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), a 6-year-old Romanian immigrant who broke her arm while picking oranges to earn money. Ever curious and prone to troublemaking, Alexandria asks Roy to tell her a story to fight off the boredom of being stuck in the hospital. What follows is an epic tale of five heroes and their quest to defeat the evil Governor Odious displayed to the audience through Alexandria’s imagination—and it is gorgeous.

I didn’t realize how hard this movie was to find until it was announced that it would be available on Mubi starting in September 2024. (Amazon Prime members can add a Mubi subscription to their account, and students can score a discounted membership for just $10 per month.) I highly recommend skipping the trailer and going into the movie with only that brief description to whet your interest. But if you do want to know more, I’m only too happy to wax poetic for as long as you’ll let me, dear reader.

Over the course of the film, we learn more about Alexandria’s and Roy’s backstories and see how the little girl uses the world around her to inspire her visions of Roy’s tale. Almost every character depicted in the epic is played by an actor with a corresponding role in the real world—the masked bandit takes on the face of Roy himself, hero Otta Benga is played by a friendly ice delivery man, and Charles Darwin (yes, that Charles Darwin) is played by one of Alexandria’s doctors. This also leads to a whole slew of charming visual easter eggs connecting the fantasy world of the tale and the hospital. My favorite has to be the discrepancy between Roy’s and Alexandria’s characterization of one of the heroes, the Indian—Roy is clearly describing a Native American man, while Alexandria pictures a man she knows from the orange farm who is from India.

Speaking of the visuals, The Fall is without a doubt one of the most visually stunning movies I’ve ever seen. It was shot on location in 24 different countries and will give you immediate wanderlust as it bounces from Butterfly Reef in Fiji to the Sossusvlei dune in Namibia to the blue city of Jodhpur in India. You could watch this movie with the sound off and be thoroughly entranced by the fascinating places Alexandria and the band of heroes travel. And don’t even get me started on the costumes. I’ve been hunting for a red faux-fur coat like the one Charles Darwin wears (custom made for the movie, unfortunately for me) ever since that very first viewing. And I seriously considered copying Sister Evelyn’s insane bridal hat/crystal veil for my own wedding before conceding that it would be far too expensive to recreate.