One of the best sci-fi movies ever
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WarpedRecord — 12 years ago(January 26, 2014 10:11 AM)
Thanks very much. It seems the definition of science fiction has become quite limited in the post-"Star Wars" era. This film is not easily classifiable, but I think science fiction would be an essential part of the description. Frankly, spaceships and light sabers bore me, and I love that Nicolas Roeg takes a more nuanced approach here, showing the alien that may exist in all of us.
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ewaf58 — 12 years ago(January 26, 2014 12:39 PM)
Yes it can't be specifically defined because it is so rich in just about everything and I agree with Roeg's nuanced approach.
A reviewer from 'Time Out' has suggested that it should no longer be seen as a cult classic - rather a classic.
If we are ever visited I doubt it will be by beings in huge spaceships blowing up everything in sight - but possibly a scout ship looking for resources although unless there is cheap and practical way of traveling light years I think it's highly unlikely any aliens will ever be coming our way.
So as we may have to make do exchanging holiday snaps let's hope they do their best to look presentable.
By the way the 1987 TV film was just terrible. -
gorguruga — 12 years ago(May 07, 2013 01:50 PM)
I just finished watching the movie for the first time and it was disappointing to say the least. It could barely be classified as sci-fi so to call it one of the best sci-fi movies ever I feel is a disservice to the genre and misleading to people like myself who watched it based on those sort of outlandish claims made by people who saw the movie years ago, are probably David Bowie fans and have subsequently lost all sense of context and objectivity. There are hundreds of sci-fi movies and TV shows which are far superior to this.
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gorguruga — 12 years ago(May 15, 2013 02:30 PM)
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but do you mind answering a few questions honestly..
- Are you a David Bowie fan?
- Have you ever heard or owned a David Bowie music album?
- What's your favorite Bowie track *if you have one?
- Have you seen other movies which starred Bowie? If so, how many?
- When was the last time you actually watched The Man Who Fell To Earth?
- Do you watch many science fiction films or just the occasional one?
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gavbrown01 — 12 years ago(May 15, 2013 02:53 PM)
- Are you a David Bowie fan? y
- Have you ever heard or owned a David Bowie music album? y
- What's your favorite Bowie track *if you have one? Too many good ones to pick a favorite
- Have you seen other movies which starred Bowie? If so, how many? not that I recall
- When was the last time you actually watched The Man Who Fell To Earth? around the time of my original post on this thread
- Do you watch many science fiction films or just the occasional one? lots
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gorguruga — 12 years ago(May 16, 2013 09:21 AM)
Ok fair enough, thanks for the honest answers.
If you haven't seen Labyrinth (1986), to me it's a much better David Bowie movie even if it is a children's movie.
http://www.imdb.com/board/10091369/ -
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.