The Man Who Fell to Earth [DVD] [1976] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

The film itself, though somewhat abstract, is terrific, as it is not just a science fiction film with a twist. It is a film that explores themes that are timeless: desolation, alienation (no pun intended), and loneliness. At times, these themes are palpable, due to David Bowie's wondrously androgynous performance which is heartbreakingly moving at times.

The plot is fairly simple. An alien, Davie Bowie, leaves his family on his dying and arid planet in search for water. He lands on earth and begins his project to send water to his devasted planet by amassing the wealth that he needs to do this. He patents numerous lucrative inventions which eventually find him at the head of a world wide conglomerate. He joins up with a kindly, though stupid and vapid woman who drinks gin like a fish, Candy Clark, with whom he begins a liaison of sorts. Yet, he is always lonely and melancholic, and like her, begins to spiral into an alcoholic haze, sometimes sidetracking him from his purpose here.

At some point, excruciatingly sad and lonely, longing for his family, he reveals himself to her for who he truly is, shedding his earthly appearance, only to be met with absolute horror and repugnance by her at the sight of him. She ultimately tries to understand him, but it is truly beyond her ken. He is infinitely sad at this and longs all the more for home.

On the threshhold of returning to his planet and loved ones, he is kidnapped by corporate raiders who take over his holdings, and it is here that the movie begins to disintergrate somewhat. Yet, it remains strangely hypnotic and compelling, and becomes a sort of "Lost Weekend" of betrayal, booze, and promises which will never be kept. A parable of wanting to belong, yet knowing that you truly never will. A story about wanting to go home, but knowing on some level that you truly can never go home again.

The Man Who Fell To Earth gets a lot of mileage from this duality but the auteur of this work is Nic Roeg, and the film sees him continuing an ongoing examination of identity and perception that began when the thin white duke was still a one-hit-wonder milking his 15 minutes of fame by doing Stylophone ads. As with Performance, Walkabout and Don't Look Now, a trauma forces Roeg's protagonist to undergo a transformation - though the twist is that they're not aware of it. In Performance a reclusive rock star and a gangster on the run exchange roles; in Walkabout a schoolgirl reverts to nature and enters womanhood after her father's suicide; in Don't Look Now a grieving father finds his world becoming increasingly surreal, unaware that he has developed psychic powers as a result of his loss. And in The Man Who Fell To Earth an alien sets himself as up as a businessman, patents various revolutionary electronic devices and amasses a personal fortune so he can build a rocket and bring water back to his dying homeworld. Only he stays too long and unwittingly goes native, his plans thwarted by both our hostility and, crucially, his acquisition of our weaknesses and vices (booze, sex, paranoia, TV, fast food and plain old loneliness).

Naturally it's a movie of two parts: the first as we watch Newton's rise and try to work out who he is and what he's up to; the second when we get the twist that he's an alien and watch his subsequent decline. As such the title The Man Who Fell To Earth is probably the worst spoiler since James Cameron decided to call his shipboard romance Titanic. But of course, it's not that kind of fall. Bowie is a higher being, a fallen angel. His tragedy is that he becomes human, that's all. No big deal to us - we're born that way - but by his standards something of a come down. This is an adult version of ET if you like, though scratch deeper and you'll find a re-telling of the story of Christ. Both are visionaries, both try to improve the quality of our earthly lot (albeit Newton through his electronic inventions), both incur the jealousy of the authorities, and both are betrayed and publicly destroyed. But while Christ died and rose again, Newton arguably suffers a worse fate - condemned to remain earthbound, lose his otherworldly qualities, become human and be haunted by what he sees as his own failure. Ironically, at his nadir he becomes the very thing 99% of the population of this planet aspire to be: a pop star.

Hence the shrewd casting of Bowie. Contrary to myth, Bowie isn't a bad actor. He has screen craft, intonation and the requisite degree of naturalism. But what he doesn't really do is project. Like Jagger and Madonna, he's great on a broad canvass (i.e. rock videos, concerts) but when he tries to underplay he comes across as surprisingly slight and hesitant. This isn't a great quality to have if you're playing a vampire (The Hunger) or Pontius Pilate (The Last Temptation Of Christ), but it is spot on if you're playing a fully grown adult taking his first steps on planet Earth (it helps that Bowie was thin as paper and pale as milk - so fragile that slender Candy Clark is able to carry him in her arms). In fact, for a lot of the film Bowie actually seems scared of his environment, and Roeg uses this well. This is, after all, an examination of perception as well as identity; Bowie is the visitor but Earth, seen through his eyes, is the alien world and we are the real aliens, both in appearance (his lawyer (Buck Henry) wears the most outlandish bottle-lensed spectacles - Roeg's way of suggesting that to an alien this strange glass and metal contraption over his eyes would be quite distracting) and beliefs (the screams of livestock penned up in a passing truck seem as disturbing to him as human screams are to us - an indication that from his point of view four-legged creatures are no higher or lower on the totem pole than us hairless bipeds). It's a device Roeg used in Don't Look Now, making that most over-exposed of cinematic locations, Venice, seem unfamiliar and bizarre, and again Roeg applies his abstract approach to montage, here to suggest Newton's non-linear perception of time as well as counter pointing his experiences with those of a jaded college professor (Rip Torn) whose life he inadvertently revitalises. Indeed, the power of both films lies not in the story per sé but Roeg's unique interpretation of it. This is visual cinema, not visual cinema in the sense of Lucas or Disney, stripping plot and character down to easily grasped images, but visual in the sense of a director using the camera to impose his own narrative voice over and above that of the actors or the script. Not an approach for the faint of talent. And back in 1976, critics saw this as Roeg's hubris. In hindsight it was his genius.