by Nicolas Roeg, 1976.
Starring: David Bowie, Candy Clark, Buck Henry, and Rip Torn.
Rating: 5.5/10, 8/10.
Though it makes little sense, the writing is sometimes not all that great, many of the visuals are tacky and uninspired, and the soundtrack is the most bizarrely awful thing I’ve ever heard, I just can’t get over the feeling that underneath it all, The Man Who Fell To Earth is a great film.
Let me try to explain what I understand of the plot. Bowie plays an alien from a world where water is rapidly running out. He comes to Earth to try to either take some water back or find some way of getting more water on his planet or figure out how to get his people to Earth and assimilate themselves. But he crashes, and so, taking the name Thomas Jerome Newton, he rapidly accelerates the rate of scientific advancement on Earth so that he can build a ship to take him back. Along the way he meets and possibly falls in love with Mary-Lou (Clark), a somewhat ditzy woman who is most definitely in love with Thomas, though she doesn’t understand him at all. He also enlists the aid of a lawyer played by extremely bespectacled Buck Henry and a horny college professor played by Rip Torn. And then, basically, he gets too involved in human things like alcohol and calls too much attention to himself with his inventions and everything goes wrong and ends in something akin to tragedy.
I don’t know why I get the feel of greatness from it, I honestly don’t. It’s one of the most incoherent films I’ve ever seen, and I don’t think it’s intentional incoherence; bad writing or bad editing or something else is to blame. And yet, and yet...well, the acting is certainly great. Bowie is brilliant, really (and, of course, absolutely beautifully hot); if nothing else, this film proves that singers CAN successfully make the transition to acting (or at least HAVE done it). Henry is almost painfully good as the bewildered, vaguely tragic lawyer, Torn is simply incredible, and Clark cannot be praised enough. But good acting really isn’t enough to make a great movie.
I don’t know. If nothing else, see this film because in it you get to see David Bowie’s penis. And a beautiful thing it is.