In 1976 David Bowie was in the midst of his “Berlin-era” and had released Station, Station a dark pre-amble to the Berlin music scene and krautrock of the early 80’s. He was known as “The Thin White Duke” and Thomas Jerome Newton, the character he portrayed in The Man Who Fell To Earth was but an extension of that persona. In essence, a humanoid alien in disguise, rich and utterly alone. How far away is that from the image of “The Duke” himself just a few years after Ziggy Stardust flourished?
Bowie in this movie lets us into more of himself as an artist than he did in most of his music up to this point. It is not an especially poignant movie, and is somewhat slow and drawn out, but Bowie really does deliver on character. And seriously who hasn’t thought of David Bowie as an alien at some point anyway?
The story follows Thomas Jerome Newton, played by David Bowie, as a humanoid alien who is on Earth searching for water for his dying planet. Newton starts a multi-billion dollar technology company in an effort to raise enough money to build a ship to send him back home. Unfortunately he didn’t account for the back-stabbing cut-throat nature of American business.
All in all, this is an interesting movie to watch and should provide a change in the flavor of most sci-fi aficionados’ queue. Fair warning however, the book upon which this is based of the same name by Walter Tevis is notably different and really should not be compared to one another.
I enjoyed this movie and would recommend it to other sci-fi guys out there who are tired of the current trend of sci-fi action.
Some things to watch out for though:
- Rip Torn’s penis
- Bowie’s penis
- lots of 70’s full frontal nudity
- Bowie’s character’s true face:
The original trailer:
