I am and have always been a fan of science fiction cinema. It is an art form, if done correctly, that has no limits to its themes and approach. Unfortunately, most science fiction movies are made in a childlike action/adventure style that limits their ability to surprise. A few brave directors have used the genre to make philosophical statements about our society. Stanly Kubrick, with his masterpiece “2001,” set the high-level benchmark for those films. Nicolas Roeg, in 1976, took Walter Tevis’s science fiction novel, “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” as a vehicle for his unique style of filmmaking. The result is one of those rare art films made in the science fiction genre.
As far as a science fiction story, “The Man Who Fell to Earth” falls under the category of present-day science fiction. Not being a story about the future, the movie deals with the arrival of an extraterrestrial alien named Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie in his acting debut), who crash-lands in New Mexico. He is searching for a way to bring water back to his drying and dying planet, but the ship he arrives on is no longer operative after the crash. His plan then consists of selling gold rings to start a business based on inventions created by the advanced technology of his home planet. His business becomes a hugely successful conglomerate, making him enough money to build a new ship that will either bring his planet’s population back to earth or carry Earth’s water back to him. The movie never makes it clear what the plan is, but either way, it did not seem to me that it was to the benefit of our planet. It is what appears to be the US government that stops him before he leaves, experiments on him, and keeps him prisoner until he is deemed non-threatening. Throughout this process, Newton succumbs to many of the vices of our modern world, such as greed, sex, TV watching, and alcohol.
Other characters in the film include a simple-minded waitress named Mary-Lou (Candy Clark), who falls in love with Newton and introduces him to TV, alcohol, and sex; patent lawyer Farnsworth (Buck Henry), who is hired to run the company; and former college professor Nathan Bryce (Rip Torn), who is hired to help him build his spacecraft. In addition, the US government agent who plays the villain in the film is played by black actor Bernie Casey, which was a revolutionary bit of casting that tries to raise awareness of racism in our society.
The movie goes into detail on how the modern world will consume Newton until he becomes as apathetic as most of us humans. Using Mary-Luo as the catalyst for these vices is Roeg’s attempt at saying something about our dependent relationships. While we like to believe that love and companionship will heal and bring out the best in us, it is true that for many people, they do the opposite, exposing us to jealousy and various addictions. Roeg has a unique style of visualizing the actions in his film, using fractured and very disorienting quick edits that are perfect for this portrayal of Newton’s descent into alcohol, especially in the illustrated sex scenes with Clark. Like how he filmed his horror masterpiece, “Don’t Look Now,” these scenes give a very intimate and realistic feel to the act of making love. As opposed to his previous film, in this movie there is a much colder, less warm feeling to the sex scenes. At one point in the movie, Newton admits to Mary-Luo that he never loved her. It is TV, sex, and alcohol that he succumbs to in his attempt to forget those he truly loves (his abandoned wife and children).
Interestingly, alcohol and sex are not the only vices that Newton gets caught up in. His introduction and subsequent addiction to television are not only the most interesting parts of the movie for me; they are also, in my opinion, very profound. Once hooked, he will not be content with watching one show at a time and creates a fascinating collage of 1970s-style TV sets that are all turned on constantly, each to a different channel. His extended, apathetic viewing of the TV further pushes him into wanting to be alienated from reality. Hal Ashby would further expand on this theme with his remarkable film “Being There,” and that film’s protagonist also behaves and acts like Newton does in this film. At one point, Newton states that television shows you everything without ever explaining what it is that is being shown. That, of course, would result in confusion for an alien arriving on earth and help to explain the utter state of confusion in which Newton finds himself throughout the movie.
David Bowie is a superb performer, but he is not and never was a professional actor. At the time he made this film, he was deep into a cocaine addiction, which gave him a gaunt and spaced-out look that fit this role. Bowie admitted later that he never did any acting in the movie and that he just memorized each day’s lines and spoke them as himself. The fact that this comes across as a very convincing portrayal of an alien tells you more about who Bowie was in the mid-70s than his ability to act. Regardless of the reasons, it is his performance as Newton that holds the movie’s non-linear plot together. While he never ages, the other characters sometimes do and sometimes don’t, making it very difficult to decipher what period of the movie is being depicted at any given time. This is also very indicative of the Roeg style of filmmaking. David Lynch, Thomas Anderson, Terry Gilliam, and others would take notice, as this and other Roeg films greatly influenced their work.
It is the obscure, non-linear style of how Roeg moves the film’s plot that made it difficult for me to truly enjoy the movie. At many points in the film, I did not know what timeline was being shown. It is possible that the movie requires multiple viewings to truly understand everything. In addition, the scenes of Newton’s memory of his home planet look as if his family are the only surviving people and came across as amateuristic and unrealistic. I tend to think that those scenes only reflected his daydreams, as do other visions of the crashing of his spacecraft and some sort of bright light significance of a possible threat to our planet. The fact that these ideas were never even partially realized discouraged me from truly appreciating the movie.
“The Man Who Fell to Earth” is an ambitious artistic film that uses the science fiction genre to say something about our western consumerism-driven and faulty society. The movie contains an iconic David Bowie performance and is never boring. While not perfect, it is a movie well worth watching at least once.
1001 Movies before you die 