Nicolas Roeg’s alien visitor finds a planet full of temptations and little comfort. David Bowie’s gentle performance makes this strange, disjointed science fiction moving, though the wandering second half asks for more patience than it always earns.
Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth is absorbing, often moving science fiction, provided we accept that it will sometimes leave us waiting for the story to catch up. Its alien visitor, Thomas Jerome Newton, sets about building a technology empire on Earth. David Bowie makes that predicament worth watching even when the film becomes needlessly obscure. The director is interested in how our habits look to someone who has never learnt them. He makes a persuasive case that they would look rather unhealthy.
The casting could have encouraged a performance built entirely around being unusual. Instead, David Bowie gives Newton a gentleness that keeps the strangeness from becoming a pose. We were surprised by how protective we felt of him. His reserve seems so easily mistaken for indifference, and his vulnerability makes the surrounding human appetites feel threatening. Candy Clark, as Mary-Lou, supplies a welcome warmth; her contribution matters in a film that can otherwise keep people at an uncomfortable distance.
Anthony B. Richmond’s cinematography is especially effective in the desert landscapes, which make this supposedly familiar planet seem difficult to inhabit. The open space looks inhospitable, and the film needs no elaborate explanation to make us believe that Newton is far from home. Brian Eatwell’s production design also helps make the world of commerce feel uninviting, despite everything it promises. The surroundings are worth looking at, but the film never makes us eager to live in them.
Graeme Clifford’s editing leaves gaps where a more conventional film would insert an explanation or a clear transition. The effect is disorientating, and it suits a protagonist for whom ordinary experience cannot be taken for granted. The music credited to John Phillips and Stomu Yamash’ta contributes to that unsettled feeling. Together with the disruptive sound, it prevents the pictures from becoming a comfortable sequence of attractive oddities. At its strongest, the film makes us feel how much effort it takes Newton simply to be here.
The second half does wander, and there are stretches where the uncertainty stops being interesting. Paul Mayersberg’s screenplay, adapted from Walter Tevis’s novel, gives the film plenty to consider about loneliness and materialism, but these scenes add little to what we have already understood. At 139 minutes, that repetition is a substantial demand on our patience. Several scenes could lose some time without making the character or his predicament any less strange.
An alien who builds a technology empire has found something humans will readily understand. Nicolas Roeg uses that business success to make human dealings look suspicious, without turning Newton into a blameless judge of our behaviour. The visitor is susceptible to the distractions around him, and the performance allows us to understand their appeal. Science fiction often invites us to imagine what superior abilities might solve. Here they seem of little use against ordinary loneliness.
See it when there is time to let a scene remain puzzling without immediately reaching for an explanation. The second half asks for more patience than it always earns. Anyone expecting a brisk account of an alien’s business plan should make other arrangements.
