anno

The earliest hint is the exchange profiling Evelyn upon introduction; the camera cuts to the Masked Bandit whenever Roy speaks, then to Evelyn when Alexandria answers, suggesting a parallel relationship between the former two and latter two. Evelyn's quirks also correspond to whatever Alexandria's doing at that moment, like when Evelyn sniffles before Alexandria sneezes or when the lady admits to the girl's habit of throwing oranges at the priest while squirming in her seat when Alexandria's constipated. The two even simultaneously gather the scattered pills for Lee Pace's respective characters while asking, "Why?" Play-pretend spills over the boundary; after Darwin compares Evelyn to a butterfly, for instance, Alexandria traces a butterfly over herself in Evelyn's lipstick. The patients' argument over whether Roy had been inspired by Alexandria's note for his portrayal of Evelyn seems to be the most explicit agreement between the two about her real-world identity.

This understanding makes the Bandit and Lady's relationship a proxy: an oblique means of communication and processing Roy and Alexandria's attachment. For instance, when Alexandria (after sabotaging her doctor's attempt to look out for her) admits to Roy that she'd rather stay with him than recover, Roy recounts a conversation in which The Bandit expresses guilt of taking Evelyn captive...much like the work of a "captivating" story. Indeed, he later guiltily owns up to using his story as a snare. Evelyn's answer that the Bandit, on the contrary, had liberated her from her gilded cage could represent Alexandria's feelings about seeing the world vicariously after a lifetime in a grove.

The strange choice of a romantic relationship could be symptomatic of a limitation set by (correct me if I'm wrong) silent cinema's reliance on histrionic romance to portray love with a traditional beginning, middle, and end. At its most basic, a genre romance is arguably structured by the progression of the lovers' transparency toward one another: peaks mark openness and troughs mark resistance. Granting this definition makes The Fall metatextual; the 21st century audience is able to follow a friendship that is a crucible for lies and clarity. The communication [clarity] is at work when Roy attempts to overdose and justifies pushing Alexandria away, the Masked Bandit reasons that he's "fallen in love" with Evelyn but cannot be loved: a pattern of insecurity in relationships since his break-up. It's almost as though there's a correlation (not necessarily causation) between their closeness and his suicidal ideation. Pulling where Roy pushes, Alexandria implores Roy to let the lovers kiss: the only gesture of full, total acceptance she can innocently visualize for closure. After all, kisses have been Alexandria's currency for closeness throughout the film, like when she blows him one on their second meeting (or whatever you call that smack/pop), or during his fake-out death. Roy's refusal is explicitly accounted for by his eventual reference to his failed relationship, but I still find the syntax of the scene crucial enough to consider that, for an initial viewer, it sounds as though that a kiss would be the last thing he'd want for characters based off himself and Alexandria; even when he caves in and humors her, we never see the Bandit and Evelyn kiss.