Splashdown
The Man Who Fell to Earth is a film I've known about for a long time. I didn't see it, though, on television in the 1980s and 1990s, since the movie's great amount of nudity made broadcast presentations severely truncated. I like to see a film in its uncut form; I can no longer stand watching a film interrupted by commercials. In the past, this is how I and everyone else experienced films shown on television, but cable channels, internet services, and video formats (VHS and later DVD types) have changed this for the better.
Mentioning television in an essay about Nicholas Roeg's weird and avant-garde science fiction film from 1976 is appropriate, since Thomas Newton (David Bowie in the eponymous role) spends much of his downtime watching televisions, having set up multiple sets in his hotel rooms and his home, as he simultaneously keeps in telephone contact with his gopher/dealmaker Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry).
Newton, a fabulously wealthy man, gets that way through patents for commercial devices, like a camera that develops the film almost instantaneously inside its own structure, much much faster than Polaroid cameras. A large big screen TV appears at some point; music projected from something like compact discs (spheres actually, but compact) anticipates the age beyond vinyl.
On the surface, Newton is an entrepreneur billionaire with a portfolio of genius ideas. In actuality, he's an alien who's trying to create the means of constructing an interstellar spacecraft so that he can return to his home world, and to his family. His own world, seen in flashbacks, is dying from some environmental catastrophe, the greenery vanishing, the water supply evaporating. He came (fell) to Earth to investigate the possibility of finding a new home for his people, or ways of helping his planet, but his ship got wrecked in the landing.
Newton receives quirky assistance on an emotional and physical plane from Mary Lou (Candy Clark), a young woman working as a maid in the New Mexico motel where he stays in the film's early minutes. She's a decent young person of average intelligence, good-hearted, helpful to him, and a near constant companion of his throughout most of the movie. She finds out eventually that he's an alien, is utterly shocked and dismayed, but nevertheless she sticks by him.
Candy Clark, so great in American Graffiti and Q, is one of the chief reasons to watch The Man Who Fell to Earth. I'm recommending her based on personal observations, but when she's on screen, when she talks in her southern-inflected voice, she's one of the most delightful actresses I've ever seen. She holds her own with David Bowie, who complements her ordinary character with his own depiction of aloof strangeness. After a while, the two of them seem natural together, despite their sharp differences.
Buck Henry, wearing thick glasses that magnify his eyeballs, is good as Farnsworth, his character a somewhat effete gay man. Rip Torn plays a former college professor who's constantly going after his pretty female students. His life alters course when Newton enlists him, through Farnsworth, into the interstellar ship project.
Newton, by that point, is a very famous person--even Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell, as himself, has a comment about him for the news. Newton's fame happens in time with his growing sense of not fitting in on Earth. An increasingly reclusive celebrity, acting more and more weirdly around others, including especially his girlfriend.
Roeg's signature style was by 1976 well-developed. The co-director of Performance, the director of Don't Look Now and Walkabout, his sudden and jarring tone shifts, the startling edits, the use of music as an accent to striking visuals, all lead to a filmmaking method unlike any other director. I have a feeling that his previous work as a cinematographer, particularly in Richard Lester's masterpiece, Petulia, a film with similar non-linearity to many Roeg films, influenced the style of The Man Who Fell to Earth and others, like Don't Look Now. Jumping around in a narrative may seem confusing to some viewers, but it's a common technique in novels, with characters remembering events and also witnessing present moments, all presented to the reader in a single paragraph. Much of William Faulkner's writing is like avant-garde filmmaking.
Roeg's technique in terms of time has a multi-dimensionality to it, a style I first noticed when I saw on TV in the 1980s Don't Look Now, Roeg's 1973 adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier story, starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. I saw that film several times, fascinated by its puzzling structure, mesmerized by the use of flash-forwards, a technique in keeping with the psychic abilities displayed by Donald Sutherland's character.
Roeg is a filmmaker who doesn't see time in a linear way, at least in his movies, if not in real life. Newton, then, fits perfectly within this perspective. In one scene, in the backseat of his limousine, he hears and sees sounds of rustic nineteenth century settlers on what, in the present, is now an empty field. What's more, the settlers can see his car driving by, a kind of unidentified object from their future. Time shifts around Newton when he's in tranced states of mind.
The film is too much to absorb in one sitting. Someday I'll watch it again. David Bowie is great as Newton--there's the sense that no one else could've played the part. Even as he's hard to relate to, there's a poignant quality to what he needs to accomplish. Is this E.T. the Extraterrestrial for adults? Not really. Spielberg's alien wants, like Newton, to go home, but his experience of Earth is mostly confined to associating with little kids and later dodging government scientists. Newton also gets fucked with by people who want to understand what makes him tick, but always in this film is Roeg's commitment to the mystery of thoughts and feelings played out on a canvas, whether that's the Australian outback in Walkabout, the creepy seeping Gothic mysteriousness of Venice in Don't Look Now, or the mind-fucking rock star's labyrinthine mansion in Performance.
Vic Neptune
The Man Who Fell to Earth is a film I've known about for a long time. I didn't see it, though, on television in the 1980s and 1990s, since the movie's great amount of nudity made broadcast presentations severely truncated. I like to see a film in its uncut form; I can no longer stand watching a film interrupted by commercials. In the past, this is how I and everyone else experienced films shown on television, but cable channels, internet services, and video formats (VHS and later DVD types) have changed this for the better.
Mentioning television in an essay about Nicholas Roeg's weird and avant-garde science fiction film from 1976 is appropriate, since Thomas Newton (David Bowie in the eponymous role) spends much of his downtime watching televisions, having set up multiple sets in his hotel rooms and his home, as he simultaneously keeps in telephone contact with his gopher/dealmaker Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry).
Newton, a fabulously wealthy man, gets that way through patents for commercial devices, like a camera that develops the film almost instantaneously inside its own structure, much much faster than Polaroid cameras. A large big screen TV appears at some point; music projected from something like compact discs (spheres actually, but compact) anticipates the age beyond vinyl.
On the surface, Newton is an entrepreneur billionaire with a portfolio of genius ideas. In actuality, he's an alien who's trying to create the means of constructing an interstellar spacecraft so that he can return to his home world, and to his family. His own world, seen in flashbacks, is dying from some environmental catastrophe, the greenery vanishing, the water supply evaporating. He came (fell) to Earth to investigate the possibility of finding a new home for his people, or ways of helping his planet, but his ship got wrecked in the landing.
Newton receives quirky assistance on an emotional and physical plane from Mary Lou (Candy Clark), a young woman working as a maid in the New Mexico motel where he stays in the film's early minutes. She's a decent young person of average intelligence, good-hearted, helpful to him, and a near constant companion of his throughout most of the movie. She finds out eventually that he's an alien, is utterly shocked and dismayed, but nevertheless she sticks by him.
Candy Clark, so great in American Graffiti and Q, is one of the chief reasons to watch The Man Who Fell to Earth. I'm recommending her based on personal observations, but when she's on screen, when she talks in her southern-inflected voice, she's one of the most delightful actresses I've ever seen. She holds her own with David Bowie, who complements her ordinary character with his own depiction of aloof strangeness. After a while, the two of them seem natural together, despite their sharp differences.
Buck Henry, wearing thick glasses that magnify his eyeballs, is good as Farnsworth, his character a somewhat effete gay man. Rip Torn plays a former college professor who's constantly going after his pretty female students. His life alters course when Newton enlists him, through Farnsworth, into the interstellar ship project.
Newton, by that point, is a very famous person--even Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell, as himself, has a comment about him for the news. Newton's fame happens in time with his growing sense of not fitting in on Earth. An increasingly reclusive celebrity, acting more and more weirdly around others, including especially his girlfriend.
Roeg's signature style was by 1976 well-developed. The co-director of Performance, the director of Don't Look Now and Walkabout, his sudden and jarring tone shifts, the startling edits, the use of music as an accent to striking visuals, all lead to a filmmaking method unlike any other director. I have a feeling that his previous work as a cinematographer, particularly in Richard Lester's masterpiece, Petulia, a film with similar non-linearity to many Roeg films, influenced the style of The Man Who Fell to Earth and others, like Don't Look Now. Jumping around in a narrative may seem confusing to some viewers, but it's a common technique in novels, with characters remembering events and also witnessing present moments, all presented to the reader in a single paragraph. Much of William Faulkner's writing is like avant-garde filmmaking.
Roeg's technique in terms of time has a multi-dimensionality to it, a style I first noticed when I saw on TV in the 1980s Don't Look Now, Roeg's 1973 adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier story, starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. I saw that film several times, fascinated by its puzzling structure, mesmerized by the use of flash-forwards, a technique in keeping with the psychic abilities displayed by Donald Sutherland's character.
Roeg is a filmmaker who doesn't see time in a linear way, at least in his movies, if not in real life. Newton, then, fits perfectly within this perspective. In one scene, in the backseat of his limousine, he hears and sees sounds of rustic nineteenth century settlers on what, in the present, is now an empty field. What's more, the settlers can see his car driving by, a kind of unidentified object from their future. Time shifts around Newton when he's in tranced states of mind.
The film is too much to absorb in one sitting. Someday I'll watch it again. David Bowie is great as Newton--there's the sense that no one else could've played the part. Even as he's hard to relate to, there's a poignant quality to what he needs to accomplish. Is this E.T. the Extraterrestrial for adults? Not really. Spielberg's alien wants, like Newton, to go home, but his experience of Earth is mostly confined to associating with little kids and later dodging government scientists. Newton also gets fucked with by people who want to understand what makes him tick, but always in this film is Roeg's commitment to the mystery of thoughts and feelings played out on a canvas, whether that's the Australian outback in Walkabout, the creepy seeping Gothic mysteriousness of Venice in Don't Look Now, or the mind-fucking rock star's labyrinthine mansion in Performance.
Vic Neptune
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