Summary:
An alien poses as a human in an attempt to return to his dying planet, but the distractions of a human woman and the greed of man continually complicate things.
My Thoughts:
As I write this (the morning of November 30th, 2018) it has been one week to the day that Nicolas Roeg left the planet and merged with the infinite. Until yesterday, I had only ever seen Roeg’s psychological thriller “Don’t Look Now”, and while I enjoyed that film, I found the pacing to be a bit arduous (I have plans to revisit it after watching this). Roeg’s death and the fact that David Bowie (RIP) was by far my favorite musician, made “The Man Who Fell to Earth” an obvious choice for the last picture I watched before Filmstruck died last night, November 29th (a lot of deaths hang over the first paragraph of this review- sorry about that).
I’m going to be open and honest and say that because of my love for Bowie- his music, his life story, the messages he conveys, his willingness to try new things, the humble way he approached his fans, his love for mankind, and even the way he died- releasing his final album (Blackstar) two days before his death, are amazing inspirations for me as a person living my day to day life and also as an artist, as I constantly fight my own battles to continuously create- because of all that, please know that I cannot possible give this film an unbiased review. Bowie’s story and music helped me through some of the most difficult times in my life, and though he is gone, his work continues to be a huge inspiration for me. I’ve listened to Ziggy Stardust so many times on vinyl that parts of my 180-gram record are starting to crack and skip and fizzle as if I were listening to an original pressing. I’ve listened to “Life on Mars” so many times I can sing the song in its entirety without even hearing the first notes.
That being said, my huge love of Bowie does not alter the fact that this film is amazing. It’s meditative, dreamlike, ethereal and experimental, but it’s also emotionally impactful and absolutely gorgeous to behold as far as cinematography and story alike. This film looks at what it means to be human, but it also goes further than that- it presupposes that there is life on other worlds, and that the life out there might also struggle with the same thing we as humans struggle with: meaning in our lives, balancing pleasure and work, the silence of a higher intelligent being, the ageing and degradation of self that comes with that passage of time… this film is epic in scale, but still remains profoundly intimate. Needless to say, I could watch this film ten times or more and never find it a saddening bore. As I watched this, I was simply hooked to the silver screen.
“I’m not a scientist. But I know all things begin and end in eternity.”
Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence”), an alien from a far away planet, crashes to earth. After walking a great distance, pawning gold rings for cash, Thomas meets with patent lawyer Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry, “The Graduate”) where he shows him plans for nine patents. Farnsworth eventually becomes CEO of a company that Thomas heads, though he is unsure of what the company’s main goal is to be. As years pass, Thomas leads a rather private life, gathering his fortune and inventing new things, and eventually meeting a woman with a proclivity for gin and tonics named Mary-Lou (Candy Clark, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), with whom he starts a relationship. As the years continue to roll by, Thomas becomes somewhat of an alcoholic, but he’s still being eager to return to his home planet, so he begins a space program with the money he’s earned through his company and contacts Nathan Bryce (Rip Torn, “Cross Creek”), a scientist who can help him solve a fuel problem for a space ship he’s designed. As the launch draws nearer, obstacles continually pile up in front of Thomas. Will he make it home, or will planet Earth get the better of him?
So, first and foremost, I love the direction of this film. The way that it is paced is very deliberate (I wouldn’t go so far as to call it slow), and the way the scenes flow into each other is absolutely brilliant. A lot of time passes between the beginning of the film and the end, but that time sort of passes easily. What I mean by that is that, one moment, Thomas might be standing in a patent office, and in the next scene, he’s head of a corporation- there aren’t many explanations about what happened in between; Roeg just expects you to fill in the bits you want to. In a way, this film sort of works like a highlight reel for Thomas’s life- it’s like a biography of an alien that landed on earth. We see the most important bits of a certain time in his life and then we’ll jump years ahead- it makes the film feel far grander- far more epic- because we get a sense of scope for time, but also, through Thomas’s flashbacks to his home planet, we get a hint of a sense of scope for the universe itself.
The way that Roeg tells the story is also grounded more in emotion than in storytelling itself. Yes, there is a very structured story, but that story is simple enough that it could’ve been told in an hour and a half, and this movie is almost an hour longer than that. Roeg uses that extra time to really put you there in the moment with Thomas and whomever he’s speaking with. He frequently overlays images and uses peculiar choices for the soundtrack to heighten emotional response. The cinematography is absolutely spellbinding- using everything from time lapse to negative to abstract images to basic camera techniques that, when edited together the way they are, form a weirdly wondrous cinematic landscape. Television is a huge element to the film as well, and there are moments when Thomas will be having a conversation and the televisions are tuned to something apropos of the actions happening before us. There is one scene in particular where Thomas is sitting and watching a dozen televisions at once, and we watch as Thomas’s attitude towards the programing he’s watching goes from entertained to overwhelmed to sickened by what he sees, and that scene works as a good metaphor for Thomas’s view on the world over the course of the film.
A lot of this film focuses on Thomas’s inability to completely understand the human way of life: he doesn’t know about the history of the world and he has large gaps in his knowledge of basic human interaction. The result is a growing feeling of isolation, and that is worsened by the fact that he starts to actively like some of the things Earth has to offer. He ends up becoming a very split and bitter person; he has hopes and dreams, but they keep getting sidetracked by Mary Lou and alcohol, or the hurdles he has to hop over in order to keep his program running.
Another thing that makes this film interesting is the way that we slowly learn about Thomas and likewise, how he slowly learns about us. What powers and limitations truly lie within Thomas, we’ll never know, but we’re given glimpses of what might lie beneath his skin. The way that Roeg unveils new details about Thomas’s life kept me constantly engaged. I do want to note that Thomas has a particular interest in “transference of energy” and we’re shown that in multiple ways, one of those ways being sex. There is a decent amount of sexual content and nudity in this film, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it pornographic. It’s artistically shot, and each scene is meant to represent something or convey an emotion.
(MAJOR SPOILERS IN THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS)
I wanted to touch briefly on the third act of this film, and I intend to disclose the ending, so if you’d rather go in spoiler free(ish), then skip to the verdict.
In the end, Thomas does not return home; his plans are foiled by human greed. Thomas himself spends a large part of the third act locked in a room, given anything he wants, but experimented on by various scientists. Eventually, he escapes and disappears, only to surface years later when he releases an album (I’ve got to point out the fact that Thomas parallels Bowie’s stage persona Ziggy Stardust in that regard). Eventually, Nathan, the scientist that helped with the space program (and also the man who later betrays his secret), finds Thomas drunk in the middle of the day at a restaurant. Nathan essentially apologizes for how things turned out, and Thomas responds that “We’d have probably done the same to you, if you’d come around our place.” The ending is morose and depressing, and if I’m being honest, when I first finished the film I wasn’t satisfied. Why? I was emotionally invested in these characters, and I wanted, more than anything, for Thomas to return to his wife and children on his home planet. I was disappointed that the film didn’t end the way I wanted it to.
But then, as great films do, this movie percolated through my thoughts for the remaining hours of last night, and into this morning. I decided that this was the best way to end this film. Why? Well, because it says something more profound about the human race and our way of life than an alternative ending could’ve ever said. The film’s ending is sad, true, but its more thought-provoking. It begs the viewers to ask questions about their own natures, about how they live their lives. Are you living diligently, in a way that would help others, much like as Thomas was in the beginning, or have you become worn down by the weary ways of the world, as Thomas is in the end? I think, knowing how the film ends now, I’ll go back and watch this again and enjoy it even more the second time, and even more when I watch it for the tenth time.
Verdict
It’s rare that a film cracks my top ten after a single viewing, but this film is knocking on that door already. I do need to rewatch it before I say for certain that it’s that high on my favorites list, but it’s certainly a film that I hold in very high regard after one viewing. This is probably the best I’ve ever seen Bowie (though I still need to see “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence”), and I loved this oodles more than Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now” (which is still a very decent film). If you can’t tell already, I’m going to highly recommend this film, though I will say that if you don’t like art house cinema you probably wont like it as much as I did. This is a brilliant film. Rest in peace Nicolas Roeg, and God bless you.
As for Bowie, the world changed when he left it- you might say the stars look very different today. He changed the world in multiple ways, and this film is just another wonderful testament to the man that was Davy Jones, The Thin White Duke, The Goblin King, Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, and of course the immortal Bowie himself. It’s strange to miss someone I never met, but I do miss you. Rest in peace, David Bowie. It’s been almost two years since you left, but you continue to be a daily inspiration for me.
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