The Man Who Fell to Earth
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Year Released: 1976
Rating: 2.0
David Bowie (looking not unlike his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust) lands on Earth searching for water for his family, but gets sidelined by Candy Clark's wantonness, Beefeater gin and malevolent Earth doctors bent on dissecting him. Takes a standard spaceman storyline and dices it up (think Atom Egoyan) - when the shards are reassembled nothing comes together. Roeg's highly digressive approach wastes entirely too much time - the extra 20 minutes they added after its release draw things out even more - and for all the visual bravura and special effects and extended lovemaking scenes and zoom-ins on Buck Henry's googly eyes, it has relatively little to say. It is strange and extravagant, but nothing to fawn over; Bowie playing Pontius Pilate was a whole lot more 'alien' than this.
