Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru in The Fall (2006).
Photo: Mubi
It took 20 years for Tarsem Singh to figure out why he made The Fall, and when that insight arrived, it came from his childhood friends. After his family moved to Iran when Singh (who goes by only “Tarsem” professionally) was three, he and his brother were sent to boarding school in the Himalayas. For nine months of the year, Singh was surrounded by the majestic splendor of the mountain range and the natural landscape; for the three winter months when he’d return to Iran, he would soak up television, mostly American films dubbed into Persian, a language he didn’t yet speak well. (He now speaks it fluidly and enthusiastically.) Singh didn’t understand what the…
