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Just where the Hell does the film suggest Newton would be "psychic" or "exist in several time frames"? As for him seeing people in a field, the only such occurrence I could think of would be the one scored with Try to remember, where he's looking out the car, reverse shot to make us see what he sees: A horse in a field. Cut and several fades to the same horse on a different field/on his home planet/in a painting, where also his family appears. That's not an instance of "psychicness", it's his recalling/thinking of his family back home. Heck, just listen to the song played in the background then: Try to remember, and that's what we're seeing: His memories!
And where does the film suggest Newton would be "feeling what Bryce is feeling"? Due to his ability to see electro-magnetic frequencies invisible to the human eye, he notices how Bryce is secretly taking thermal images of him, and that's how he knows that Bryce now knows that he's an alien as is obvious from the thermal images.
Also, nowhere we're told that the government would know he's an alien. All we know is that Mary-Lou tells him that "they" (presumably the government and the doctors) don't believe him and think he would be "one of us" (i. e., an earthling), only a "freak" one. And the x-ray experiment is not the only significant one he's exposed to. Before that, we have the scene where the doctors cut open his chest and he's pleading for Bryce to help him and Bryce just walks away. It's just a guess, but I suppose that surgery procedure deprives him of the ability to take off his fake skin, so just as due to the x-ray experiment, it becomes increasingly impossible for him to prove to them that he really is an alien.
You may counter that with the scene where he's insisting to the doctors that he "came alone" (presumably to dispel their fears of an alien invasion), but we don't know how the scientists are taking his words and what they're thinking. Also, on a non-verbal level Roeg films and directs the scenes with the scientists a little like they know fully well what they're doing to him and they're doing it on purpose, but it's left ambiguous.
Lastly, his family's fate is left just as ambiguous by the end of the film. We see his wife holding the still body of one of the children as their weak sibling is slowly creeping towards them, but a.) the child could just be asleep or unconscious, and b.) with the style of the film, we don't know if what we're seeing is Newton's memory, his worries, or what's actually happening in parallel on his home planet at the time. All we know is that he at least assumes his wife to still be alive by the end of the film when he says that he's certain she'll hear his album one day when radio waves of it from earth will reach his home planet. Side note: They must have some kind of huge data storage servers on his home planet, as even already by the 1970s, there were much too much radio channels to just casually come upon such a message by accident. -- 80.187.108.120 ( talk) 07:52, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
I'd love to know if Newton attempted to communicate with his wife via pop songs in the novel or whether that was a Bowie addition. Yes. Communicating indirectly via pop songs does seem to be a movie (and presumably Bowie influenced) addition since in the book plot section it says "He records a message which he hopes to broadcast via radio to his home planet." -- Timtak ( talk) 09:10, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
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Just where the Hell does the film suggest Newton would be "psychic" or "exist in several time frames"? As for him seeing people in a field, the only such occurrence I could think of would be the one scored with Try to remember, where he's looking out the car, reverse shot to make us see what he sees: A horse in a field. Cut and several fades to the same horse on a different field/on his home planet/in a painting, where also his family appears. That's not an instance of "psychicness", it's his recalling/thinking of his family back home. Heck, just listen to the song played in the background then: Try to remember, and that's what we're seeing: His memories!
And where does the film suggest Newton would be "feeling what Bryce is feeling"? Due to his ability to see electro-magnetic frequencies invisible to the human eye, he notices how Bryce is secretly taking thermal images of him, and that's how he knows that Bryce now knows that he's an alien as is obvious from the thermal images.
Also, nowhere we're told that the government would know he's an alien. All we know is that Mary-Lou tells him that "they" (presumably the government and the doctors) don't believe him and think he would be "one of us" (i. e., an earthling), only a "freak" one. And the x-ray experiment is not the only significant one he's exposed to. Before that, we have the scene where the doctors cut open his chest and he's pleading for Bryce to help him and Bryce just walks away. It's just a guess, but I suppose that surgery procedure deprives him of the ability to take off his fake skin, so just as due to the x-ray experiment, it becomes increasingly impossible for him to prove to them that he really is an alien.
You may counter that with the scene where he's insisting to the doctors that he "came alone" (presumably to dispel their fears of an alien invasion), but we don't know how the scientists are taking his words and what they're thinking. Also, on a non-verbal level Roeg films and directs the scenes with the scientists a little like they know fully well what they're doing to him and they're doing it on purpose, but it's left ambiguous.
Lastly, his family's fate is left just as ambiguous by the end of the film. We see his wife holding the still body of one of the children as their weak sibling is slowly creeping towards them, but a.) the child could just be asleep or unconscious, and b.) with the style of the film, we don't know if what we're seeing is Newton's memory, his worries, or what's actually happening in parallel on his home planet at the time. All we know is that he at least assumes his wife to still be alive by the end of the film when he says that he's certain she'll hear his album one day when radio waves of it from earth will reach his home planet. Side note: They must have some kind of huge data storage servers on his home planet, as even already by the 1970s, there were much too much radio channels to just casually come upon such a message by accident. -- 80.187.108.120 ( talk) 07:52, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
I'd love to know if Newton attempted to communicate with his wife via pop songs in the novel or whether that was a Bowie addition. Yes. Communicating indirectly via pop songs does seem to be a movie (and presumably Bowie influenced) addition since in the book plot section it says "He records a message which he hopes to broadcast via radio to his home planet." -- Timtak ( talk) 09:10, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to one external link on
The Man Who Fell to Earth. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If necessary, add {{
cbignore}}
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nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}}
to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
This message was posted before February 2018.
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(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 02:29, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 20:09, 11 March 2023 (UTC)