Review of The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) by Tim S — 04 May 2014

If government and corporations worked the way that they do in Nicholas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth, then Bill Gates and Steve Jobs would have been arrested for inventing too many things by the middle 1990s. Because, after all, how could the public cope with all of that technological change at once? Personal computers, mobile phones, digital music, digital cameras. Surely society would collapse! The authorities would step in and conduct feckless experiments on the hapless nerd geniuses. Of course, lacking unearthly genius the government scientists would miss the point that ubermenschen like Jobs and Gates descend among us deus ex machina from some magical Other Place. But you'll never know, because the mediocre bureaucrats have covered the whole thing up. Because that's one of the central conceits of this cult classic: government conspirators are rationing innovations, consumer products that could make your life easier!

Maybe if Roeg had taken aim at private industry as well as government, particularly the energy industry, he'd have had a stronger point. But, no, The Man Who Fell To Earth concerns an alien who arrives on our primitive planet to bring better sound equipment, instant photographs, mobile phones, etc in exchange for some hazy scheme to borrow some of our ample H2O. It's never quite clear. Along the way, he gets rich, shacked up, kidnapped, robbed, experimented on.

In the lead role, David Bowie slouches from scene to scene, riding his character's personal gold ring supply and the alien technologies he patents to absurdly instant and global capitalist success. Easy come, easy go. Oddly, it's only after he's a full fledged mogul that Bowie's character begins to fumble over every distraction, obstacle, and temptation put in his way, leaving him helpless when the secret police come knocking.

I suppose the filmmakers couldn't avoid plugging the star's recording career in the end, either...?

I don't even know how to talk about all of the bad sex in this film. I could have done without quite so many scenes of exploitative college grade inflation sex and bizarre alien yogurt wrestling.

Roeg does however win some points in the homophobic context of his era for portraying the sedate domestic life of a nice gay couple. That gets him a star.