![]() Everyone is dressed like extras from "Flash Gordon" with more fish-net, and all the music comes out of a Casio. We can only speculate as to whether she succeeds. In the closing scene the main character tries to become at one with the creature. The creature somehow manages to extend the boundaries of existence of those already far, far out there on the very edge of social reality. The characters, the dialogue, the music, and the social and economic context combine to create a world-view of extreme existence taken to its ultimate limits by the arrival of a creature from outer space. Occasionally, very occasionally, a film is made that transcends the ordinary, everyday reality of commercial cinema. But it's also visually stunning, original in concept, and an interesting social document on the post-punk fashion scene in New York at the time it was made. It's intellectually challenging and morally demanding, true. All of this makes it sound like an argument in favour of the repellent view of the film. This is no conventional science fiction film with a monster from out of space. Heroin will do but a chemical secreted by the human brain during orgasm is even better. It devotes its life to expanding its own consciousness. But whereas the humans are mortal and have an inconvenient habit of dropping dead, murdered by the alien at the point of sexual orgasm, the alien itself lacks physical form. All are obsessed with their own personal needs and ambitions to the exclusion of all else. In fact the alien manifests all the same characteristics as the actors in the hip New York crowd. The same can be said for the alien invader. ![]() The film centres on the ultimate in self-obsessed, self-absorbed, selfish humanity. Burroughs characters are often as repellent as the characters in this film. The same social actors are to be found - people searching for something on the edge of reality, where sex and drugs are pursued and traded, all in the name of obsessive self-interest or self-oblivion. The science fiction antecedents to the film probably lie in the literary work of William Burroughs as much as in film history. This makes them interesting in themselves. True, the acting is patchy, but like the actors in Warhol films they do not seek to portray common or garden social characters that we recognise from everyday life, the stuff of mainstream cinema but are personalities constructed at the extremities of social existence - the exceptions, misfits, and exiles. For those prepared to suspend belief it is a rare masterpiece of originality. If you don't like it and can't make sense of it, then the loss is your own. And it is no less valuable because of that. ![]() The narrative is so multi-layered that it takes two viewings to appreciate the connections between scenes and characters. ![]() It is not a film that makes imminent sense on the first viewing. The second group tend to watch it at least twice and usually more often than that. People I've shown or lent this film to on video tend to polarise into two groups - those who loathe it with an intensity bordering on the pathological (and see some of those comments on this site), usually finding it either incomprehensible or repellent and those who find it fascinating and truly original. ![]()
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