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Rating:
Nicolas Roeg - The Man Who Fell to Earth (1975)
Based on a science fiction novel by Tevis, set in an unspecified but near future, the film is entirely on the side of the alien protagonist, with the two monocles watching each other: the director's camera and a Bowie not yet dulled by success, who paradoxically will end up allegorically following all the steps of the protagonist: the cyber-rocker who fell to earth, the difficult beginnings, the great success, then alcohol and drugs, and finally lots of money but lots of boredom...
The E.T. thus falls from his spaceship-archive footage compensated with the director's inventiveness- and comes from a dying planet much older than ours: he had left his somewhat reptilian family in the ancestral deserts in search of other habitable planets. Due to a malfunction, he falls to Earth but manages to blend in with humans under the name Newton-sic-with the aim of one day returning to his planet of origin. To do this, he decides to exploit the secrets of his superior technology and becomes a successful inventor. Bored and slightly intrigued by the childishness of human customs, he spends his time as an alien alienated, watching the violent and frantic earthlings on about ten stacked color TVs-oh my TVC15...-making love with his fish-skin nude lover, the only one who truly loves him and knows his secret-; the soundtrack is music recorded on futuristic marbles in a cylindrical player covered by a transparent hemisphere-and it must be said that even then people thought of going beyond analog: the director tried to go beyond the vinyl medium imagining a more practical and indestructible format. Discovered by the CIA, just as he was about to succeed in his odyssey plan, he is isolated, studied by physicians as a rare animal, and then put under surveillance in an isolated place, where he becomes alcoholic and very depressive. Key scenes: Elvis Presley popping up on a trash TV with a thousand channels, the leaden towers of the space center-a futuristic architecture later used seriously-see peripheral housing blocks-, Newton acclaimed as a rock star, almost biblical epic-used also for the cover of Station to Station.
The message is clear: from the alien's point of view, we are the aliens on earth, destroying a still young planet, polluting it and raping it while all it would need is the water we carelessly waste. An ecological metaphor or, considering today's proliferation, finally the first non-musical about an alienated rockstar-I want to hear people sing- Newton shouts with the musical marble in hand... A dark but fascinating sci-fi film-with several bloops in the script, capable, with a small budget, of creating suspense, giving credibility to the story, as was the case in genre fiction in Italy-see Andromeda and co.; the issue of alien presences and other worlds is hinted at with modesty and mystery, as is right, given that if they observe us, they do so with due caution and shroud themselves from sight... silent and mysterious like a gloomy black new moon night. And as a superior civilization rightly should, one that, to be such, does not bother others nor seeks to make converts or show off with pyrotechnic demonstrations of technology.
Recommended film for lovers of panettone sci-fi extremely childish and ultimately a bit debunking of Matrix and the virtual duels, the endless and useless video game saga of Star Wars - it seems like the musical Cats- of Superman E.T. flying on a bicycle, the UFOs Christmas trees of Close Encounters.
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