Nicholas Roeg's bizarre 1970s science-fiction film tells the story, after its own fashion, of Thomas Jerome Newton, a humanoid alien who visits Earth in the hopes of finding water for his dying, barren planet. Using his advanced technological knowledge he patents several inventions and establishes his own corporation, only to fall prey to both the treachery of the human race and to his own vices. At least that's what The Man Who Fell to Earth is supposed to be about, but I'm not sure I would have gotten that if I had gone into the movie blind. As with his previous Don't Look Now, Roeg splinters the story into puzzle-piece fragments through elliptical editing and storytelling that can be considered, according to the viewer's taste, either ambiguous or incompetent. We have to wait at least an hour before learning Newton's true nature, and even then the filmmakers don't seem particularly interested in fleshing out the science-fiction aspects of the story. Clearly the aim is more allegorical; if anything, the film is most like an adult take on The Little Prince. Roeg and writer Paul Mayersberg don't mean for Newton to be taken for an actual extraterrestrial than as a representative outsider, a position the filmmakers, as Englishmen in America, probably empathized with. As with Don't Look Now, I came away from The Man Who Fell to Earth feeling that despite a basically straightforward plot I had missed something. Nonetheless, I liked this Roeg film better than his previous effort, if only because it was so beautifully. While Don't Look Now is quite atmospheric, superbly conjuring up a sense of unease through its ominous Venice locations, it was also disappointingly (and surprisingly, considering Roeg's background as a cinematographer) shabby-looking in its photography. This film, on the other hand, is consistently brilliant on the visual level even when it's just baffling in terms of story. As with such other innovative 1970s cinematography showcases as "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "The Godfather, Part II," the film's soft, pastel blue-and-green photography takes a little getting used to, but it effectively and beautifully conveys Newton's disorienting and alien experiences of Earth.
Review of The Man Who Fell to Earth
