Amazon.com video review:
While other films directed by Nicolas Roeg have attained
similar cult status (including Walkabout and Don't Look
Now), none has been as hotly debated as this languid but oddly
fascinating adaptation of the science fiction novel by Walter
Tevis. David Bowie plays the alien of the title, who arrives on Earth
with hopes of finding a way to save his own planet from turning into
an arid wasteland. He funds this effort by capitalizing on several
highly lucrative inventions, and in so doing becomes the powerful
leader of an international corporate conglomerate. But his success has
negative consequences as well--his contact with Earth has a
disintegrating effect that sends him into a tailspin of disorientation
and metaphysical despair. The sexual attention of a cheerful young
woman (Candy Clark) doesn't do much to change his outlook, and his
introduction to liquor proves even more devastating, until, finally,
it looks as though his visit to Earth may be a permanent one. The
Man Who Fell to Earth is definitely not for every taste--it's a
highly contemplative, primarily visual experience that Roeg directs as
an abstract treatise on (among other things) the alienating effects of
an over-commercialized society. Stimulating and hypnotic or
frightfully dull, depending on your receptiveness to its loosely knit
ideas, it's at least in part about not belonging, about being
disconnected from the world--about being a stranger in a strange land
when there's really no place like home. --Jeff Shannon.
