The Man Who Fell to Earth

MOVIE #1,056 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 07.10.23 • VOLUME XLIX • This has to be the most “I would have eventually watched this at some point!” TRUE RANDOM selection in the history of TRUE RANDOM. But I don’t question the GODS of TRUE RANDOM. If they wanted to me to watch this weird-ass “David Bowie as an alien” 70s sci-fi cult classic, then so be it. The main takeaway I had from this was that, yes, it is weird. But not at all in the ways I was expecting. (The plot is the plot, and is as “weird” as any film from the genre really.) The thing about The Man Who Fell to Earth that struck me was how strange it was stylistically. This, at times, feels like an art movie, and not in an annoying or pretentious way. It was my first foray into the work of Nicolas Roeg, as well, and has definitely made me curious about his other work.

I suppose it’s a bit disjointed, but it always feels purposefully so. The passing of time is only marked by the characters surrounding Bowie aging as he remains the same. And Bowie is fantastic. You get the feeling that he could have been an all-time great actor if that was the arena he leaned into.

The supporting cast is also pretty good. I love seeing Rip Torn in these earlier roles. Candy Clark as Mary Lou, Bowie’s human love interest, is more of a mixed bag, but ultimately her chaotic energy is good for the film. I liked this meditation on trains in one of her more subdued scenes…


The film’s anticlimactic ending was also lovely. There’s pointed criticism about Western/American culture here, and watching all the energy sputter out of the protagonist as well as . On the surface it seems totally inscrutable and bizarre but it has a lot of cutting things to say about media saturation, societal control and — weirdly enough — the dangers of alcohol? They’re all interconnected in the end: stitching together a web of malaise that is so commonplace, we accept it plainly as the way things are meant to be.

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The Man Who Fell to Earth is a 1976 British science fantasy drama film directed by Nicolas Roeg and adapted by Paul Mayersberg. Based on Walter Tevis's 1963 novel of the same name, the film follows an extraterrestrial (Thomas Jerome Newton) who crash lands on Earth seeking a way to ship water to his planet, which is suffering from a severe drought, but finds himself at the mercy of human vices and corruption. It stars David Bowie, Candy Clark, Buck Henry, and Rip Torn. It was produced by Michael Deeley and Barry Spikings. The same novel was later adapted as a television film in 1987. A 2022 television series with the same name serves as a continuation of the film 45 years later, including featuring Newton as a character and showing archival footage from the film. It was released on March 18, 1976.