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So, a few years later, Newton and (name) are the top of the org chart at World Enterprises, the largest and most powerful company in the history of ever. And the more money they make, the more reclusive Newton becomes. Eventually, he relocates the company to New Mexico, where he originally landed, and takes up with a wide-eyed local named Mary Lou (Candy Clark). She introduces him to modern conveniences such as television, alcohol, and oral sex, only the first two of which he becomes hopelessly addicted to (he is an alien, after all). This begins to interfere with Newton’s mission, clouding his judgment and causing him to become withdrawn and emotionally unstable. As he inches closer to his goal, circumstances intervene and his choices catch up with him, pushing it ever farther out of reach.

All of this might be sad, except for a few things.

First of all, remember Newton’s affinity for water? Well, it turns out the point of his being here is to use his superior alien intellect to amass great wealth so he can build a giant spaceship and ferry water back to his stricken planet. It’s kind of a stupid plan, because anyone smart enough to build an interplanetary starship must know that on the way to Earth he flew right past enough ice to top off a dozen planets with watery goodness. It’s just floating around out there minding its own business. Kevin Costner and Dennis Hopper could spend decades chasing each other around on jet skis and never see land. Newton’s solution to this problem is the equivalent of taking a boat to China for Chinese food instead of just picking up a phone and ordering out.

But that’s just nitpicking. Obviously, the point of all this is not to be scientifically accurate, but to illustrate an important allegorical point of some kind, but it’s incredibly difficult to tell what that’s supposed to be. The themes explored in the novel are more in line with the Cold War paranoia that was fashionable in the early ‘60s, while the film feels more like a vague indictment of consumerism and a half-hearted meditation on morality and personal choice. But the story jumps forward in time on several occasions without warning, making it unclear how much time has passed. Are they in the ‘80s now? The ‘90s? Everyone looks older, but it still looks like they’re in 1976.

At various times, Newton experiences visions of his family back on his home world. He also seems to have an ability to see into the past, or to exist in multiple time frames. Occasionally, he appears to have some sort of mind reading ability. But none of these experiences ever amount to anything and it’s never clear what - if anything - it all means. At one point, World Enterprises attracts the attention of what seems to be the government, who try to intimidate Farnsworth with threats so mysteriously cryptic it’s almost hard to take them seriously, let alone fully understand what the problem is. The story digresses at a couple of points to focus on Farnsworth’s personal life, but it doesn’t seem to have any relevance to the overall plot. And we spend a little too much time with Peters (Bernie Casey), a government agent who lives like a mafia Don and openly wonders whether or not his actions are morally justified.

I do too, because I have no idea who he is, what he’s doing, or why we have to spend 10 minutes watching him making out with his hot wife and putting his kids to bed right in the middle of the film. I could go on for another thousand words about how frustrating this movie is, but I think you get the idea. But what’s more important is that while yes I was perplexed, yes I was confused and yes, at times I was praying for it to end, I was never at any point patently uninterested. That sounds like faint praise because it is. But The Man Who Fell to Earth is such an ambitious and thoroughly avant-garde undertaking that it’s hard for me to fault it for swinging so hard at the ball. They don’t make movies like this anymore, and while in some ways that’s a good thing, it’s also the reason most science fiction movies these days feel like something you’ve already seen a hundred times before.

David Bowie was an ideal choice for the lead here, because if you could turn the man himself into a two-hour film, this is about what you’d get. It’s maddening, moving, haunting, laborious, and fascinating - and whether you love it or hate it or just end up scratching your head like I did, you’ll still be thinking about it a week later.

I guess what I’m saying is, David Bowie is probably an alien.

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