PhilPaine.com

This inter­est­ing fan­ta­sy was filmed in India, Roma­nia, Namib­ia, South Africa, Czech Repub­lic, Indone­sia, and oth­er places. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is superb, remind­ing me of the crisp images of James Wong Howe. The direc­tor, Tarsem Singh, was try­ing for an adult approach to a psy­cho­log­i­cal para­ble about sui­cide and death, illu­mi­nat­ed by some of the most beau­ti­ful land­scape and archi­tec­ture in the world. It’s thick with cul­tur­al, sci­en­tif­ic, and his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences best enjoyed by a well-read audi­ence, though it can be enjoyed well enough with­out notic­ing them.

The sto­ry: in 1920’s Hol­ly­wood, a stunt­man recov­ers from a seri­ous injury, and rejec­tion in love, in a hos­pi­tal. Anoth­er patient is a young Roman­ian immi­grant girl (per­haps ten years old). In order to bribe the child to get him mor­phine pills with which to com­mit sui­cide, the stunt­man tells her a fan­tas­tic tale, with the flavour of the Mas­navi or the Ara­bi­an Nights. The films inter­cuts to rep­re­sen­ta­tions of this tale, which employ real land­scapes and set­tings with fan­tas­tic cos­tume and mag­i­cal effects.

This film appeared and passed unno­ticed in 2006.