# Alien (1979)

### reviewed by
Matthew K. Gold

    ALIEN (1979)

    A Review by Matthew K. Gold
    from the Book-Lover's Guide to Cinema
    http://www.panix.com/~mgold/meter.htm
    Copyright 1998 Matthew K. Gold

    Smoke Without Mirrors

The first third of Ridley Scott's Alien contains a brilliant reworking of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. In the opening scenes of the movie, Scott appropriates Kubrick's modernistic set design and lighting, and finds a similar, patient sense of rhythm and pace. Where 2001 is theoretical and abstract, however, Ridley adds a dimension of gritty realism. He photographs a crew of space travelers emerging from cryogenic sleep like butterflies unfolding from their chrysalises, but when these characters come to life, the first thing they do is gather around the breakfast table, slurp coffee, smoke cigarettes, and argue about the wages they're receiving on the trip. On board a commercial towing vehicle, they're like a bunch of space-age mechanics tooling around in a run-down jalopy. At one point early in the film, we see the crew trying to land their vessel. Scott shows this as a difficult, stressful task, which is unusual for the sci-fi genre: usually directors cut from shots of a tractor-beam-pull-in to shots of mechanics walking up to a safely landed ship. In ALIEN, by contrast, we see the characters sweat and grimace, and we come to know that grit is an indelible aspect of the human spirit.

As exhilarating as the first third of this movie is--with Scott's long, snake-like continuous shots, which mirror the motions of the aliens who appear later in the film--the movie takes a downward turn exactly when the alien kills its first victim. Scott replaces the deliberately slow pace of the opening scenes with the dull rhythms of generic conventions. Suddenly, instead of watching a great movie, we're watching a great sci-fi/horror flick. The eccentric cast of characters, who are set up so well at the beginning of the movie, are transformed into shallow, murder-by-numbers victims by the end. Plot contrivances begin to build up and annoy the viewer: why, for instance, when she has only seven minutes to meet up with her companions, does Ripley suddenly obsess so much about her cat? Yes, it shows that she has an execeptional understanding of species other than her own, but it feels forced. Earlier in the movie, she had an iron will, and was willing to sacrifice two humans; near the end of the film, she turns unexpectedly sentimental.

For many people, the ALIEN series is valuable because it places a woman (Ripley/Sigourney Weaver) in the role of the action hero. Weaver does a great job, and the battle-of-the-sexes scenes at the beginning of the movie have an extremely realistic feel. However, near the end of the film, Scott's camera resorts to the familiar male gaze as it watches Weaver get out of her uniform. Although this scene is undeniably sexy, it's also completely gratuitous--I'm simply not convinced by explanations such as "her nakedness is symbolic--she has to fight her last battle with the alien when she is at her most vulnerable." After all, she gets out of one uniform in order to get into another. It feels like a step backward to me.

If I could split a movie in two, I'd take the first third of ALIEN and put it in the shrine, and take the last two-thirds and give it a 3.5. Overall, it's a fine film, but in the end it doesn't live up to its own promise.

    Rating (1-5): 4.0
    12/24/97
    © Matthew K. Gold 1997

Directed by Ridley Scott. Cinematography by Derek Vanlint. Production design by Roger Christian, Leslie Dilley, Anton Furst, and Michael Seymour. Written by Dan O'Bannon and Thilo Newman. Starring Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerrit, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, Bolaji Badejo, and Helen Horton.

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