One of the best sci-fi movies ever
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gorguruga — 12 years ago(January 25, 2014 02:28 AM)
Nearly any film can be deemed as "complex and multi-layered" if you look deeply enough into it - the process of over-analysis can be applied to anything. This film isn't complex or multi-layered, it wasn't a bad premise but in reality the final production was mediocre at best. The sole reason it has a score above 5 is purely because of Bowie fans voting it up.
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ewaf58 — 12 years ago(January 25, 2014 03:45 PM)
Well I wonder which version you've seen and what year you originally saw it.
When you say it isn't complex or multi-layered it tells me you didn't understand it.
The problem is I can neither prove or disprove how much you took in the first time you saw the film since you will have had plenty of time to read other reviews to gain a deeper insight.
However I doubt you realised the following on your first viewing.- Corporate paranoia - the fact the they are watching us whatever we do (or come from) Note the figures seen watching the alien's initial arrival.
- The central characters aged (except Bowie) although we didn't seem to be moving forward in time much in terms of the era we were in.
- The time travel sequence where an early farmer's boy perhaps from the 19th century looks up and see's a modern day car.
- The central theme of disassociation that any of us may feel in a new or alien environment.
- The human cost of new ideas that can make huge amounts of money - by human cost I mean murder. Yes the fix is in.
I could go on and I do believe that the above were not things you picked up on during your first (perhaps last) encounter with this piece of art.
Now you need to be honest with yourself as I think you're just jumping on the bandwagon with other people who don't like this film without really understanding what it's about.
However I always try to respect other people's views - but in this case I urge you to read more about the film and watch again with so you can relate to its - I would say - poetry.
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HadrianVonPaulus — 12 years ago(January 26, 2014 06:53 AM)
It's curious how much anger this film is capable of provoking. If you really think the only people who found worth in the Man Who Fell to Earth are deluded Bowie fans, I wonder how you explain the fact that the critical opinion is much more flattering than the commercial one (6.7 on imdb vs 86% on RT). Is there proportionally a higher concentration of Bowie fans among movie critics, than among imdb users?
Now as to the film itself, you're right about one thing: it can indeed hardly be classified as sci-fi. I see that as part of its appeal, though. It's a sort of a hodge-podge of genres, themes and ideas, and the genius of this sort of postmodern approach to adapting what was a more straightforward sci-fi novel lies in the fact that it reflects its protagonist's fractured worldview. As a viewer, your primary identification is with Newton. You're supposed to be confused by it all, but hopefully, by the end of the film, you would have understood the same depressing things about our culture that Newton had come to understandpreferably without turning into a broken alcoholic yourself.
That the film is complex, both in terms of narrative and cinematography, is, I would think, readily apparent to anyone with a functioning pair of eyes and no more than a cursory familiarity with established movie-making conventions. Symbolism, more than dialog, reigns supreme. Huge chunks of the plot are conceptualized through literary and cinematic references: Icarus, Billy Budd, the Third Man, William Blake etc. The narrative is non-linear and the editing deliberately removes all means of measuring the passage of time. It
is
complex. Now, whether that complexity is justified, or merely an exercise in self-indulgence depends, I guess, on one's point of view, but there's certainly more than the bare-bones alien encounter story going on here. Bowie is on record to have experienced it primarily as a love story. Buck Henry saw it as a metaphor for the great suffering that comes with great genius. Roeg was mostly interested in getting across the idea that life on Earth is already much stranger than anything we may find on other planets. These differing points of interest are largely echoed in the reviews. In other words, the story means different things to different people, much like a complex, multi-layerd work of art would.
That said, art house films tend to be polarizing, even within the realm of their target audience. It's perfectly alright to say you hate a film, but it would be a credit to you if you refrained from making judgments about why someone might like it. For instance, when I first saw the Man Who Fell to Earth, the only thing I knew Bowie by was Let's Dance, and I didn't even particularly like it. -
ewaf58 — 12 years ago(January 26, 2014 09:40 AM)
Great someone else defending the film. An earlier post I made commented that some people on here would have been happier with an Alien ship coming to the rescue and zapping all the bad guys.
I've just bought the Blue-ray version as I haven't seen it for years. -
ewaf58 — 12 years ago(January 26, 2014 12:49 PM)
By the way excellent analysis of the film. I can't wait for my DVD to arrive.
Back in 1976 I came out of the cinema knowing that I'd had just seen something really good but I had to see it again before all the elements started to sink in. -
HadrianVonPaulus — 12 years ago(January 26, 2014 01:36 PM)
Thank you. I have a lot of love for this film. Even though seeing it as many times as I did sadly made me grow somewhat desensitized to its magic, bits of it still have the power to move me to tears.
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ewaf58 — 12 years ago(January 26, 2014 01:43 PM)
Yes that's a problem when you really like a film - I've seen a couple of Hitchcock's far too many times.
It is very sad - I would have loved his family to have been saved but alas no one can win against large American corporations when there's money involved - now.. and back then. -
gounian — 12 years ago(March 05, 2014 06:56 AM)
What about those who aren't Bowie fans who rate it highly? Are we just an anomaly? I wouldn't say I dislike Bowie, but I've never really listened to any of his music. The only songs of his I actually know are Let's Dance and Golden Years. (And that's because of the Simpsons)
I'm a big fan of surrealism so this movie worked really well for me. I saw it yesterday for the first time so I doubt it has anything to do with nostalgia either. Different strokes for different folks -
gorguruga — 12 years ago(March 05, 2014 08:51 AM)
I think people who aren't Bowie fans who rate the movie highly are few and far between but there will be others, like yourself, who are in that category. Not that I'm criticizing you for liking it. I suppose this is the thing about surrealism - certain ideas hit home with certain people. I enjoy a few surreal movies too but this one just didn't do much for me. I thought the first 10 minutes were interesting, it set the scene nicely but just went downhill rapidly after that (in my opinion).
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lantzn — 10 years ago(March 06, 2016 07:38 PM)
I so wish they had gotten a better actress to play Tommy's girlfriend. She was horrible and her whiny, screechy voice irritated me. She was one of the few characters that deserved our respect for actually treating him honestly to the end but I couldn't stand her on screen.
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gavbrown01 — 11 years ago(July 14, 2014 07:32 PM)
The mock fight/sex scene (I would have just called it a sex scene) is one of the best scenes in the movie, because it convincingly conveys alienness. It's ooky. If you remember, it is followed up by the attempted sex scene later, where Mary Lou wants to sleep with Tommy, whom she clearly loves. But she is repulsed when his skin starts to ooze.