The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
Directed by Nicolas Roeg

Film Review

It's an odd thing that many of the anxieties that were expressed by writers and filmmakers in the 1970s - things like the prospect of impending ecological calamity, the growing power of global corporations and the destructive consequences of consumerism - have, four decades on, become very real mainstream concerns, backed up by hard evidence.  As a consequence, many of the science-fiction films that were made in the mid-1970s, most of which were considered freakish and sensationalist at the time, have acquired a much greater resonance and seem horribly prophetic.  One such film is Nicolas Roeg's visionary masterpiece The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), a liberal adaptation of Walter Tevis's novel which not only offers a profound meditation on the failings of Western civilisation but is also a beautifully composed piece of film art, a kind of self-consciously trippy tribute to Andrei Tarkovsky, with even less narrative cohesion than Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Immediately prior to this film, Roeg, an experienced cinematographer of some repute, had garnered considerable acclaim for his deliriously eerie adaptation of a Daphne Du Maurier short story, Don't Look Now, arguably the most inspired British horror film of the 1970s.  The aggressive cross-cutting and elliptical storytelling that Roeg employed so brilliantly on that film are used even more daringly on The Man Who Fell to Earth, to the extent that it practically jetisons conventional film logic and demands that the spectator views it in a completely different way.  As disorientating and languorous as the film is, it is also strangely compelling, and you understand it not through reason but through intuition, like music or poetry.  The fact that the film touches on so many present-day concerns is a bonus; what makes it such a remarkable piece of cinema is that it dares to stray so far from what we are used to, and does so with such style and confidence.

The English rock legend David Bowie was perfect casting for the central role of the cat-eyed alien posing as a shy Englishman who sets out to build a corporate empire on Earth so that he can ship a consignment of water back to his home planet.  A few years earlier, Bowie had fashioned himself as another charismatic doomed alien, Ziggy Stardust, for his now iconic concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.  The Man Who Fell to Earth gave Bowie his first leading film role and no other human on the planet was better suited for the part, his chiselled androgynous features, spindly physique and obvious sense of detachment from everything around him making him one of the sci-fi genre's most convincing extraterrestrials (dyeing his hair a psychedelic bright orange and fitting him with luminescent cat-like contact lenses also helps).  At the time of making the film, Bowie was heavily addicted to Cocaine and had not the slightest idea what he was doing, and this adds to the creepy reality (or should that be unreality?) of his performance.  The unsettling alien quality of Bowie's screen persona is accentuated by the earthiness of the capable supporting artistes, Rip Torn (the disillusioned scientist par excellence) and Candy Clark (who better to play the alien's nymphomaniac lover?).

What is probably most remarkable about The Man Who Fell to Earth is how many philosophical and practical issues it manages to cram into its modest 140 minutes of spectacular (and often mindblowingly surreal) imagery, and how many questions it asks about the future of mankind.  The vacuity of popular culture is succinctly expressed by Bowie's alien: "[television] shows you everything about life on Earth, but the true mysteries remain."  By starring in the film, Bowie even appears to acknowledge the emptiness of his own celebrity status.  The ease with which the alien assembles a global conglomerate, supported by an insatiable public appetite for consumer items is no longer a fanciful idea, as companies like Microsoft and Apple have shown.  The disgraceful way in which America deals with immigrants and suspected terrorists is also brutally alluded to in the alien's ill-treatment at the hands of government agents.  The main theme of the film is, as its title implies, mankind's fall from grace, symbolised by the alien's gradual descent into debauchery as he succumbs to the pleasures of the flesh.  As Bowie's alien is distracted from saving his world by an evil concoction of hard liquor and increasingly sordid love making, we catch a frightening glimpse of humanity's descent into oblivion.  Once the party is over, the hangover is sure to come.

Film Synopsis

A hairless humanoid alien travels to Earth from a distant world on a mission to save his people, who are being wiped out by a catastrophic drought.  Adopting a human disguise and the name Thomas Jerome Newton, the alien enlists the services of patent lawyer Oliver Farnsworth and rapidly creates a global conglomerate, World Enterprises Corporation, which manufactures technologically advanced consumer goods.  With the vast fortune he soon accumulates, the alien hires a scientist, Dr Nathan Bryce, to help him construct a spaceship that will transport him and his precious cargo of water back to his home planet.  In the meantime, he begins a passionate love affair with a hotel maid, Mary-Lou, and becomes addicted to alcohol.  Having discovered Newton's real identity, Bryce betrays him to the government and the alien is taken prisoner...