The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

United Kingdom
directed by: Nicolas Roeg
written by: Paul Mayersberg + Walter Tevis (book)
starring: David Bowie, Rip Torn, Candy Clark
seen: 6th October, 2017

I was under the impression that nothing sounds like the potentially best film in history than "a psychedelic documentary about the arrival of the reverend David Bowie and assortment of blessings and curses amongst Earthlings". Sadly, my hopes were not met. The first fifteen minutes gave an excellent example of surrealism being used in the service of experimental sci-fi. But the rest of the film slowly sank into an incoherent, uninteresting and amateurish stagger that could end in any given moment or keep going forever, a.k.a. my desire for meaning and purpose in storytelling was overwhelmingly dissatisfied.

This film gave me same vibes as Easy Rider = the drugged overconfidence that "the substance" will reveal itself without a targeted effort from film-makers themselves and the connection to the time of inception that makes it for me, removed from the seventies zeitgeist, largely incomprehensible. In the end, the one thing that sticks with me the most is my discovery of the origin of the brilliantly opulent ping pong autumn forest wallpaper room (including real dead leaves on the fake lawn carpet) that appeared in the exteded cut of Snyder's Watchmen.