天外来客1976

A male alien disguises himself as a British citizen Thomas Jerome Newton (Bowie, in his first movie role), who crash-lands on earth in hope of transporting water back to his draught-plagued home planet, but in iconoclast Nicolas Roeg’s thrall, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH is much less a heartstring-tugging inter-species tale à la STARMAN (1984) than a rhapsodic welter of total corporeal abandon and existential chaos.

Shot and edited in a desultory but blistering, wired fashion that leaves large portions of elision in its sprawling plot, Mr. Newton is a quick adapter of earthling mannerism and capitalistic canniness, cashes in lucrative patents he immediately accrues masses of fortune and becomes the reclusive wirepuller behind a technology conglomerate, with a figurehead personified by lawyer Mr. Farnsworth (Henry), an implicit gay character whose loyalty is too inflexible for his own good.

While Newton shacks up with an unsophisticated hotel maid Mary-Lou (Clark) in New Mexico, who introduces commonplace human diet to him, booze, church-going and sex, worts and all; a tributary pivots around a skirt-chasing college professor Dr. Nathan Bryce (Torn, in a rapturously predatory mode) merges into the main stream when he is hired as a key technician in fulfilling Newton’s home-returning project, only Bryce soon begins to suspect Newton’s alienness. After revealing his real form to Mary-Lou (which leaves her incontinent and horror-stricken) and leveling with Bryce, a naive Newton is snatched and immured by government agents nearly before his home-returning journey and put under close scientific examination (who tips off the tidings? Bryce or Mary-Lou? We have no clue, maybe Newton is spotted as early as he first emerges, as we glance a suit-attired figure near the commencement).

Marooned on earth and having no means to return to his wife and children, who are languishing on a remote, desert-looking planet, deadly or alive, the television-addicted Newton stays youthful as time wears on, a reunion with an aged Mary-Lou years later blatantly celebrates the film’s most rousing set piece, the “sex and pistol” manifesto in human flesh, copulation and blank gunshots, a heady delirium capturing the epoch’s ethos. A final encounter with Bryce, on the other hand, reveals that earth-stranded Newton might have already assimilated and acculturated to the life as we know it, a sad sack burdened with eternal youth.

An emaciated, auburn-haired Bowie aptly embodies his cult alter ego under pallor, lethargy and an amusing air of self-awareness, his alien comes across as urbane, benevolent, vulnerable, even in front of a dainty Candy Clark, but also strangely disinterested, inscrutable and sexy; Rip Torn and Candy Clark, represent human race’s different sexes, tangibly establish a triangle tie-in with Bowie, though each’s character arc is dismembered and perfunctorily strewn into the scramble which doesn’t go anywhere eventually. When its deadening clamor anticlimactically settles (the foley artists invent a cacophony of noise through the narrative), Roeg’s bash into Sci-Fi sphere is much more self-revealing than horizon-broadening, for what it is worth, it is a hot mess salted with glint of ingenuity.

referential entries: Roeg’s PERFORMANCE (1970, 6.9/10), BAD TIMING (1980, 7.5/10), DON’T LOOK NOW (1973, 8.3/10).

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Pieter Breughel c. 1558; Oil on canvas, mounted on wood, 73.5 x 112 cm; Musees royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels <Musée des Beaux Arts> About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. W.H. Auden 1940

"I want to go home…I want to go home… Please don't do, you don't understand… Mary Lou!Help me!Don't! No…no! It's stuck…It's stuck. I'll never get'em off. " 孤独、迷惘、又迷人。 他不属于这个世界，他与所有人相异。 借用《Carol》里的一句话："My angel. Flung out of space. "我的天使，飘渺宇宙，天使逡巡。 剪辑真的挺意识流的哈哈哈，细枝末节多，为了大家宝贵的时间，非宝爷粉或者科幻粉我稍稍拦你们一下。 其实我更希望影片在宝爷出逃，拐进小巷里就结束；亦或是在那个圣诞节之夜就戛然而止。 PS:看了139分钟未删减版，宝爷那么多赤裸镜头给我吓傻了…感觉让我看宝爷的裸体是对他的亵渎了_(:з」∠)_

这可能是罗伊格最好的电影，它带有一种独特的、在他的另外作品中缺乏的美国气质：一种近乎朴素的自我意识，一种不被文本绑架的自由度——甚至可以说，一种民主。惠特曼最先描述了这些气质；如同惠特曼的作品，这部电影几乎会唤起我们的乡愁，尽管我们并未离开什么地方（这使我想起有一篇关于大卫 · 林奇的文章写道，看他的电影就像体验失去我们从未拥有过的事物）。地球就是这样的世界，一个有着浮士德式力量的符号帝国，外星人通过电视和广播遥望着它并被打动——完全是这样，因为它的表象就是它最深刻的内涵。这些内涵事实上如此深刻，以至于当我们思考它时我们会像Newton那样几乎精神错乱，但随即却奇异地坚定了活下去的欲望。日本元素尤其象征着Newton在地球上不能理解却奇异地被其吸引（cf. 他造的房子）的这一切，也就是人类文明本质中的超现实性。作为电影来看，罗伊格有时近乎病态（我是说MV化）的英国式花哨镜头风格被惠特曼气质调和成崭新的事物，现在来看仍然几乎从不流于庸俗，或因为强有力的语境而不会显得流于庸俗（cf. 戈达尔电影中不可之间戈达尔化的那些元素，比如说风景）；在其他作品中呈现为怪癖的导演习惯，例如喜爱闲笔刻画“反面人物”天真无辜的家庭生活，还有时而很严重、也许可以被称为博尔赫斯—爱伦·坡病（片中有一个侍者确实非常像坡）的夸张手法，在这里似乎并不突兀，甚至带来了某种罗伯特 · 奥特曼式的温暖。相比之下，Bad Timing几乎具备完全同样的元素，却是一部完全失败、不可救药的电影。当然，仍然存在一些过分愚蠢的片段需要剪除；虽然我确实极为欣赏（如果不是沉迷于）David Bowie的裸体，但床上开枪那一大段胡闹还是不要这么长为好。罗伊格的电影充满了听觉引文，其依赖音乐的程度或许开塔伦蒂诺之先河（待考证）。在此方面，他（总体而言）品味粗糙，但达到的效果时而奇妙地准确；不过，他从来不在意场景间音乐的连接——肯定也是因为他的作品不可预测的剪辑方式阻止了与配乐家更紧密流畅的合作——这让我相当痛苦。这大概不重要。这是一部美好的电影；它还有一个童话般的结尾，而且，Bowie戴着那顶帽子看上去是如此美妙。

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