David Bowie - Loving the Alien
The Starman holds a special place in the hearts of many. Always one to challenge convention and reinvent himself, Bowie’s career was fascinating and varied. Here, Alan from Malahide Library shines a light on David Bowie in his portrayal of “the alien” and the varying forms it takes in his acting roles.
David Bowie was without doubt one of the greatest artists of his time. He changed the face of popular music and left behind a back catalogue which is arguably unequalled by any other artist in the field.
His achievements as an actor are also considerable and his abilities in this art form were hinted at from the time many people first noticed Bowie, when he inhabited the persona of Ziggy Stardust. Indeed, Bowie had studied mime and avant-garde theatre under Lindsay Kemp some years earlier. Parallel to his trail blazing career in music, over the decades Bowie would provide arresting performances in many productions for film, television and theatre.
For me, two film performances deserve particular attention.
The mid-1970s found David Bowie living in the United States and achieving continued success with his ninth studio album Young Americans. During this time, he took the starring role in a film production entitled The Man Who Fell to Earth, adapted from the celebrated novel by Walter Tevis and directed by the extraordinary British director Nicolas Roeg, fresh from the triumph of the supremely spooky feature Don't Look Now. Inevitably, this meeting of one of the most unorthodox film makers of the time with the most innovative and charismatic figure in popular music resulted in an utterly unique and uncompromising film.
The Man Who Fell to Earth chronicles the fate of an alien from a planet dying from a severe drought, who comes to Earth to utilise his superior technological knowledge by establishing a hugely successful conglomerate. With the wealth he gains, he will be able to transport water back to his planet.
Bowie, at this juncture in his career, seemed born to portray the alien, who assumes the name Thomas Newton. Frail, pale and painfully gaunt, he seems unutterably alone and isolated among the people and places of 1970s America, haunted by poignant memories of his wife and children on their far-off desert planet.
Bowie's initial portrayal of Newton as a reserved and stoic figure, skilfully negotiating the strange world he now inhabits while haunted by thoughts of his endangered family and planet, gives way to a slow collapse as the alien succumbs to the myriad temptations and distractions of modern western society.
Assailed by the endless images and invitations to pleasure and apathy which the modern media breeds, and the lure of alcohol, Newton tragically does fall to earth.
Bowie's performance is masterful in baring the pain and self-doubt which Newton experiences, his decline captured in a vivid and excruciating manner. At the film's conclusion, after being released after some years of detention and examination by the United States government, we last see Newton, heavily drunk, at an outside restaurant. His conversation there, with one of the few friends he made since his arrival, is deeply moving. Bowie's performance beautifully exudes the utter desolation and ruin of Newton's life. The alien knows he will never see his family or his doomed planet again. He has failed in his mission and surrendered to a self-destructive existence.
Bowie's performance is heart-breaking, and it's interesting to note that, towards the end of his life, he revisited the character of Newton in his musical Lazarus. Perhaps the truly lost soul whom Bowie portrayed earlier in his career continued to haunt him over all those years.
During 1980 and 1981, David Bowie played Joseph Merrick in the Broadway theatre production The Elephant Man, to immense acclaim, in 157 performances. Attending one of these performances was the Japanese director Nagisa Oshimo. He later said that he saw in Bowie "an inner spirit that is indestructible".
Accordingly, he invited Bowie to play the role of Major Jack Celliers in his upcoming production, Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. This film, set in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the Second World War, details the relationships among Japanese and British officers.
Bowie provides an intriguing and enigmatic performance as Celliers, regarded by his fellow inmates as "a soldier's soldier", whose arrival and presence at the camp both troubles and fascinates the young camp commandant Captain Yonoi (played by celebrated musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also provided the hauntingly beautiful soundtrack).
Celliers leads the prisoners in a number of rebellious acts, all the while Yonoi's fixation with the Major grows. The relationship between the two characters, who rarely interact directly during the film, is portrayed in a masterfully oblique manner.
Celliers seems somehow separated from his fellow prisoners, something of an alien figure, an interloper in the wider conflict who carries another conflict deep within himself. Indeed, it is revealed that that both Celliers and Yonoi are haunted by feelings of guilt and shame from their respective pasts, and Bowie beautifully portrays Cellier's revealing of his tortured psyche in a soul-baring confession he makes to a fellow prisoner.
The fates of Celliers and Yonoi are ultimately intertwined, and the tragedy which awaits them also allows redemption for Celliers in a selfless act of sacrifice, which again Bowie wonderfully conveys in a brave and heroic performance.
In fact, Bowie would describe his part in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence as "the most credible performance" he had given in a film up to this point in his career.
Of course, David Bowie gave outstanding performances in many other productions. But I believe that The Man Who fell To Earth and Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence are very special films, both featuring extraordinary performances from Bowie in which he helped us to be able to love the alien.
- Alan, Malahide Library
