Breaking Down What Makes Tarsem Singh Tick
The other year on an assuming day in September, I was scrolling through twitter as one does and noticed that Lady Gaga had just released a new video for her song, “911”. I made a mental note to watch later and kept scrolling until I saw a name that made me audibly gasp and sit up in my bed.
“Directed by Tarsem Singh”
Director of one my favorite movies of all time, The Fall (2006), he’s been noticeably absent from the entertainment industry for the past several years until suddenly showing up to helm the pop star’s music video.
Born in Jalandhar, Punjab, India, Singh started as a music video director, helming music videos for acts such as R.E.M. and En Vogue and commercials like the iconic Beyoncé, P!nk, and Britney Spears Pepsi Superbowl ad. He made his transition to features with his directorial debut The Cell (2000).
While he only has writing credits on one of his films, Tarsem Singh’s work has similar themes all throughout them.
Every Frame Is A Painting
Singh's films are visual masterpieces chock full of references.
The Fall first came to my attention some time back in college. Browsing tumblr all the time, I couldn’t help but notice photos and gifs of this film on my dashboard constantly. Bold colors and ornate costumes always stopped me in my tracks and one day the propaganda worked and I finally sought the movie out. Unfortunately not on any legal streaming or rental platform, I found it easily by ahem… other means. (This is a good time to mention that I am once again asking for a Criterion restoration and release of this film).
A simple story, The Fall takes place in 1915 and is about a young Romanian girl, Alexandria (Cantica Untaru) and former stunt actor Roy (Lee Pace) who are both recovering from recent injuries in a Los Angeles hospital.
Right away when the film starts, Tarsem Singh’s unique visuals stand out. The opening is a gorgeous slow motion black and white scene, in a an ode to the silent era of cinema, showing Roy’s accident on the set of his latest film.
When Roy and Alexandria meet, he tells her a story about a mysterious masked bandit in a fantasy land. Roy’s tale is brought to life in Alexandria’s imagination and man does it run wild.
Characters are juxtaposed against stunning architecture, scenes blend in together, (one memorable shot, a butterfly pinned on fabric transitions into a butterfly shaped island), and wide shots are used aplenty to highlight the twenty different locations used in the filming process.
Tarsem Singh’s attention to detail is immaculate. When filming in Jodhpur, India, known for its bright blue houses, he felt as if they weren’t blue enough and provided paint for the locals to refresh their buildings.
While The Fall may be Tarsem Singh’s best work to date, his career began much earlier. One of his most notable short form works is the music video to R.E.M’s “Losing My Religion”.
Even back then, Singh’s proclivity for classic art, film, religious and literary references was evident in this music video. He based the video around the short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”. The dark horror of Caravaggio, the iconic image of Saint Sebastian shot with arrows, Hindu deities and more are also all referenced in some way.
Singh himself even said that he wanted the music video to be “melodramatic and dreamlike” which I think is the thesis statement to all his directorial efforts in the years to follow.
Singh’s feature directorial debut The Cell, a sci fi thriller about a psychologist, Catherine, who enters the mind of a serial killer, Carl Stargher, to learn about his victims, is full of stunning imagery and references as well. Arguably the most memorable scene in the film is when sharp glass panes fall onto a horse, splitting it into several pieces. We are then treated to detailed images of the horse's intestines.
That scene was inspired by visual artist Damien Hirst who uses animals suspended into glass as his medium of choice.
Where The Fall is a fantastical dream, The Cell is a never ending nightmare. Catherine’s trip into Stargher’s twisted mind is horrifying, all aided by Singh’s effective mise-en-scène. Images like creepy women dressed in bondage gear represent Stargher’s victims.
Tarsem Singh’s art references play the best in his third feature film, Immortals. In my opinion, this is the only film based on Greek mythology that actually understands what a myth film should look like.
Singh returns to Caravaggio and other classic Renaissance paintings as inspiration for a lot of the visuals and cinematography.
In one scene Greek soldiers fight each other in the sky against a stormy, cloudy backdrop and the shots look like they were lifted straight from a painting. The Greek gods wear bright, gold armor while looking down from Mount Olympus.
This is continued in the “911” music video, which manages to fit in dozens of references in just a short four minute video. From films like The Color of Pomegranates and 8 ½, to Michelangelo and tarot art, Gaga’s music video is a sumptuous feast for keen eyes and is complementary to both Singh and Gaga’s visual aesthetics.
It Was All A Dream
Reality is not all that it seems to be in Tarsem Singh’s work. One of his motifs is to play around with the ambiguity of life vs dream states. This is used the best in, The Fall.
When Roy spins his fantasy to Alexandria, she imagines the people around her in the hospital as the characters of the story.
As the Bandit and his four companions go on their adventure against the evil Governor Odious, it is at first clear that the world is all of Alexandria’s imagination. But at the climax of the film when Roy begins to kill off the characters he’s created, Alexandria manages to insert herself into the story as a new character and to change the narrative. Her changing Roy’s story also signifies Alexandria stopping his suicide attempt.
In The Cell, the dreamscape is now used with a science fiction context. A machine is used to allow Catherine into the mind of serial killer, Stargher, in hopes of finding where he stashed his last victim. As Catherine dives into Stargher’s twisted subconscious and learns of the childhood abuse he faced, she finds it harder and harder to remember who she is and that the world she’s in isn’t real.
Horrific versions of Stargher’s victims populate the world and a monster that represents Stargher’s murderous side chases Catherine through the subconscious.
Similar to The Fall, The Cell ends with the dream world having effects on real life, with Catherine failing to save Stargher’s mind and having to kill the monster which causes his body to die in the real world as well.
“911” uses Singh’s classic dream approach but unlike the latter two movies, it’s used as a surprise ending.
As Gaga starts off the music video waking up in a surrealist world, one first assumes it’s just a typical music video with bold costumes and imagery, but in the final minute, we realize Lady Gaga’s character is actually hallucinating after a car accident. What started off as a simple reference to Michelangelo's Pieta also represents a woman clutching a body after the accident. Those connections keep happening throughout the video.
While the title of the song directly correlates to the ending of the music video, the song is a reflection on her mental health and struggles over the years.
Costuming
Tarsem Singh’s most significant creative partnership to date is with the late costume designer, Eiko Ishioka. Born in Japan, Ishioka started her career in advertising until 1985 where she designed the costumes for Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. Ornate, elaborate and stunning in every detail, Ishioka’s work is distinct even with a small body of work before her death in 2012. She and Tarsem Singh worked on four films together and she’s a big reason his films look and feel the way they do.
She tends to pull inspiration from non Western cultures such as the dress Sister Evelyn wears in The Fall or the designs the oracles wear in Immortals.
A film not discussed yet is Mirror Mirror (2012), a Snow White retelling. The costumes will forever be the most notable part of that film. Lily Collins and Julia Roberts trade off between beautiful fantasy dresses inspired by several periods of European royalty.
Ishioka’s influence is still felt in Singh’s work even after her death, with “911” and the short-lived NBC show Emerald City, both having costume design reminiscent of her distinct style.
Horses in the Desert
This one is just simple detail I noticed, for some reason Tarsem Singh loves a wide shot of a horse in a desert, they’ve shown up in three of his works thus far!
Tarsem Singh is an unsung auteur and a bold voice in filmmaking even 20 years later. His work has never been loved by critics nor the box office (I blame distribution and marketing on The Fall’s underserved 60% on Rotten Tomatoes!), you cannot deny that he is original. It’s been over five years since his last major work with no news for what lies in the future. While it’s a mystery when or how he’ll pop up again, this super fan will be waiting patiently to see what wildly fantastical work he directs next.