I was hip enough in the Seventies to consider David Bowie one of my favorite performers, and managed to catch him in concert a couple of times in major arenas. I guess what I was expecting in "The Man Who Fell To Earth" was something on the order of Ziggy Stardust, but if that was the only thing missing I wouldn't have been nearly as disappointed. It's not that I mind non-linear storytelling, but at least there should be a coherent story to tell. Nominally, the story's protagonist is on a mission to Earth to figure out how to bring water to his home planet where he's left his family. That never actually happens, and you have to wait out the entire story in all it's excruciating boredom to find that out.
Unlike virtually all sci-fi stories involving aliens from another planet, this one doesn't go into a lot of pseudo-scientific rationale about how Thomas Jerome Newton (Bowie) arrives on Earth in human clothes with perfect command of the English language. Even though he reveals his true appearance later in the picture, I found it odd that he bleeds red blood, gets the heaves, and has the same reproductive organs as the male of the human species, thanks to an overly gratuitous sex scene with his female companion Mary Lou (Candy Clark). Can someone explain this to me - how is it Bowie's character can whiz across the vast reaches of space to arrive on Earth, and then have trouble adjusting to a taxi cab speed of forty five miles per hour, or the erratic motion of an elevator? That just doesn't make sense.
I think the concept for the film was sound; it reminded me a bit of the genre classic "The Day The Earth Stood Still", particularly relating to the mathematical concepts that Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry) parlayed into a handful of patents that made Newton a rich man. That's about as far as it went though, as Bowie's character descended into the depravity and decadence that thwarted his original mission. The occasional flashbacks to the alien's home planet only added to my bewilderment, as it was made to seem that the only inhabitants that resided there were his own family, trekking around through the desert in that makeshift tent. All very maddening but boring at the same time, and just about enough to make a lad insane.
Unlike virtually all sci-fi stories involving aliens from another planet, this one doesn't go into a lot of pseudo-scientific rationale about how Thomas Jerome Newton (Bowie) arrives on Earth in human clothes with perfect command of the English language. Even though he reveals his true appearance later in the picture, I found it odd that he bleeds red blood, gets the heaves, and has the same reproductive organs as the male of the human species, thanks to an overly gratuitous sex scene with his female companion Mary Lou (Candy Clark). Can someone explain this to me - how is it Bowie's character can whiz across the vast reaches of space to arrive on Earth, and then have trouble adjusting to a taxi cab speed of forty five miles per hour, or the erratic motion of an elevator? That just doesn't make sense.
I think the concept for the film was sound; it reminded me a bit of the genre classic "The Day The Earth Stood Still", particularly relating to the mathematical concepts that Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry) parlayed into a handful of patents that made Newton a rich man. That's about as far as it went though, as Bowie's character descended into the depravity and decadence that thwarted his original mission. The occasional flashbacks to the alien's home planet only added to my bewilderment, as it was made to seem that the only inhabitants that resided there were his own family, trekking around through the desert in that makeshift tent. All very maddening but boring at the same time, and just about enough to make a lad insane.