The Man Who Fell to Earth

Director: Nicolas Roeg

Writers: Paul Mayersberg. Walter Telvis.

"Mr. Newton, are you crazy?"


In what was possibly the easiest casting pitch in cinematic history ("Okay Mr. Bowie, you play an alien and- "I'll do it") comes The Man who fell to Earth. A story about an alien visitor on a pretty important mission, who ultimately gets distracted by love, gin and television. And yes David Bowie is the lead, and yes he still has his British accent. I should say before I begin, that this film is based on a book I did not read. So, I mean no disrespect to the author, only to the director and writers.

Watching this film is like being stuck in a room with someone of sub par intelligence, high on some drug you can't pronounce, telling you what he believes to be a very good, moving, interesting and important story when in reality it's dull, ridiculous and simply stupid. Not only that, but he's constantly getting distracted by what he sees as deep reflections, and this all goes on for a little over two hours. SPOILER ALERT. The plot follows Mr. Newton, an alien who literally falls to earth, starts a giant corporation to get billions of dollars and ends up an alcoholic mess. We later find out (way to late in the film) that it is because on his planet (never named or described. Other than a few mysterious desert sequences) there is a terrible drought and we have water here. What exactly this means is totally unexplained. What's he planning to do with this water? Steal it? Colonize our planet? Get a sample of it and somehow clone it? What? Well, it doesn't matter because he never gets to that point. Just before he is about to blast off into space, he suddenly decides he wants to stay on earth, abandoning his alien wife and kids and his entire planet. The plot is so fragmented that it's held together by a thin cord, so thin in fact that it often becomes lost. The characters are shallow, underdeveloped, so when someone is crying, getting really angry or showing any sort of emotion, it just ends up being funny because you feel no attachment to the characters at all. It doesn't help that everyone is over acting. The dialogue sometimes seems comically awkward, unnatural and quite frankly poorly written. Overall, the plot is a mess, full of useless distractions, bad dialogue and an overall boring narrative. But, if you ever wanted to see David Bowie naked (including the whole package) then you're in luck...cause he gets naked. A lot.

This is the part where I'm supposed to say, although the story was total crap the direction and cinematography make up for it. Unfortunately, they arguably worse than the story. The man who ever showed Roeg a zoom lens should be destroyed in a painful and humiliating manner. Never have I ever been subjected to so much gratuitous zoom shots. It borders on the insane, actually he waves to the border as it ZOOMS past it (get it). I can't explain why anyone would ever think these kind of shots would look good, because I don't do LSD. I know it's a cop-out but it's the only explanation I can think of. There are so many useless characters, and so much wasted time following their useless movements that it goggles the mind on how this film was able to make it past a pitch. One scene, where for some reason Mr. Newton (the alien) can see a certain spot people from the frontier area, and they (the pioneers) can see the car, but no one else in car can see the pioneers. So basically he's looking back into time, and I guess projecting an image in time as well? I dunno, cause it's never explained and it never comes up again. It just happens and forgotten, like some fucking stoner eating off your plate then forgetting it happened thirty seconds later. It's just stupid. Oh yeah, and the two point of view shots. You know just to prove that he went to film school.

The sound is equally bad. There are many times where dialogue is heard when no one is moving their mouths. I know these could be voice-overs, which appear infrequently, but they happen in the middle of a conversation. If they are voice-overs (by that I mean narration) then it's poorly done and simply confusing. The voice-overs are also bizarre. They happen so infrequently that they just confuse you: are they talking to themselves? To a journal? What? It's like Roeg thought they would be cool for a bit, then half way through said fuck it it's too hard but forgot to take out the other ones. The music is also all over the place, sometimes it's supposed to be ironic ( I think) sometimes it's spacy ( you know...cause he's an alien and all), sometimes it's so quiet you can't even hear it. Apparently David Bowie wrote a sound track for the film, but it was rejected. He used a lot of it for his album Low.

60 sci-fi at it's worst, and that's saying something. It's that bad not because in reality it has nothing to do with sci-fi, but because it takes itself so seriously. This is a really, really boring film that borders on abusive. If you want to be insulted for 133 minutes than be my guest, watch this piece of crap. If you have any self-respect, avoid it and watch silent runnings instead.