You know I couldn't resist typing that. Alien: Covenant is coming, and I was recently at a friend's house, him suddenly fainting prevented us from watching Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, so instead we ate shitty takeaway and watched Prometheus, the infamous kind of prequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 film, Alien. I actually enjoyed Prometheus a lot, and picked it up on Blu Ray almost immediately. I already had Alien on Blu Ray, so to get myself in the mood for Alien: Covenant, I'm watching the two Ridley Scott directed films in the series.
Alien might be a bit jarring to get into at first, since the first six or so minutes are almost totally silent of diegetic sound, with only the odd musical cue here and there. While this is a great time to realise that this film is fucking gorgeous to look at, it is a sequence that drags on, and while it is fitting given how slow this film is, that initial period of literally nothing happening can be a bit boring. The film gets a bit of life in it when the crew of the Nostromo are awoken from stasis; the film does a stellar job of putting you in the same boat as the crew, as at this point, both them and you have no idea what's going on, and I now realise how bad that sounds, it's not, I swear. The crew in this film are actually pretty cool, it's a small crew, which means you don't have any people who are there solely to die, this is a huge plus for the film; each crew member is distinct from the rest, both visually and in terms of personality, and the introduction you get to them, all gathered eating food and chatting and bantering with each other, makes them all fun and likable characters that you can get behind. You know what's coming, but because the film is so good with its ensemble, it really works at milking that tension, as no one character looks most likely to survive, if any do at all, so when shit gets real, and they start dying, it's pretty intense. That leads me onto something that can be seen as a flaw, but depends on how you look at it; Alien is a very slow film, the first six minutes is nothing happening, and the Alien itself doesn't really show up for a good hour, obviously people wanting to see this Alien tearing shit up, or to see the Alien at all for that matter, will be bored by this. I on the other hand love it; the first half of this film is so incredibly slow, with a lot of character interaction, and no Alien, but this stretch of the film has one of my favourite scenes, and is a brilliant example of how to build tension. The first time you see the mysterious source of the signal, it's in near total darkness, there is no sound, no movement, just a still, silent shot of the source of the signal, and it's one of the film's most chilling and effective shots. As they near the source, the music builds slowly, and the true scale of the thing is revealed, and it's really unnerving. The multiple looks you get of the Nostromo itself do a great job of selling the size of the ship, and it's all very eerie to just see it floating in space. When Alien wants to be creepy, it's creepy as shit, as scenes on the planet are very ominous and alien, while the scenes aboard the ship are dark and claustrophobic, the whole film just has creepy vibes, and with the empty, dead planet, and the massive ship with only seven crew, conveys an effective sense of isolation. It's clear that Alien does creepy really well, but what it excels at is tension, in the film's second half, when you actually have the Alien, and it's picking off the crew one by one, the creepy atmosphere of the Nostromo and the constant, looming threat of death on the entire crew makes the scenes when death comes really tense. When these scenes play out, you know what's going to happen, and you realise who's getting it this time, but the film doesn't give you that release, it lets that anxiety simmer as you anticipate the moment the tension finally snaps, and someone dies. It's at these moments the film gives a slither of payoff with a little glimpse of the Alien, the film wisely never gives you a really good look at the thing, feeding on a fear of the unknown, a need to see, to understand this creature, that never gets satisfied, the creature instead remains a mystery, a frightening mystery.
What glimpses you do get of the Alien make for a rather fucked up image, and not just in a literal sense. The Alien is monstrous to look at, lacking eyes, sporting a nasty set of teeth, and oozing and dripping slime, and it has a smaller mouth inside its mouth, which is pleasant. The guy who designed it, H. R. Giger, worked in the style of what he called 'biomechanical' and you can see this in the Alien. There's a sick elegance to its design; with its smooth, eyeless head, its stringy, tendony mouth, and parts that more closely resemble pipes and tubes than anything organic. While it's shaped vaguely like a human, there's an unnatural quality to it, one that comes across even when you can't see the whole thing. In the less literal sense, what makes the Alien truly frightening, in addition to its nasty appearance, is the concepts it's very existence plays with; for example the way it reproduces, the way it kills you, and what it does with your body, obviously I won't go into specifics, but there's just something fucked up about the Alien, the allusions in these details are suitably unpleasant, and that face hugger is scary, like seriously fucking scary. Despite having a very disturbing creature, Alien is, as I said before, gorgeous to look at; the sets have a great retro sci fi look to them, which I love, with the more alien looking environments looking very Giger biomechanical, they too are great to look at, but they're nasty, as you'd expect. Ridley Scott's directing is also great, the shots are wonderful to look at, and the directing couldn't do a better job of drawing you into the film's world, investing you in this Alien's misadventures, and in the Nostromo crew's fight for survival. The Nostromo itself looks really cool, and the model work still looks amazing, even coming up on forty years later. It's model work like this that can truly be appreciated, as I have said many, many times, models and props used in the right ways will beat CG every time, and this film is a great example. It is here however where the viewer becomes important, which is something I realised on my third viewing of the film; Alien is a film that essentially must be watched in the dark, with the sound turned up, and with no distractions, watching this film at night, on Blu Ray, and with your phone off is how you'll learn to love this film, once you're in the right mindset, this film becomes completely engrossing, and while some of the Alien stuff looks a bit silly when you think about it, if the film has you by the end of the first hour, those silly things are terrifying. Then there's of course the ending, in the spirit of the tense, claustrophobic monster hunt the film offers, the ending throws a curveball at you that is really well done, and firmly cements the Alien in the realm of nightmare fuel, as there is literally no escape. I didn't even mention the scene, but if you've seen the film, you know the scene, it's a vile scene, and it's a great example of how well this film can get under your skin, because it is genuinely sickening. I also didn't mention the music, which is also great, and does a great job of setting up an ominous, unsettling mood that is carried throughout the film.
Alien is a film I'm glad I've finally come to truly appreciate, and what you think of the film will depend on the mindset you have going in; if you're up for a gory monster film in space, then you will be bored out of your mind, but if you fancy a slow, deliberate, finely crafted film, with masterful use of tension and a palpable sense of anxiety, few films I've seen can even come close. That pacing will push some people away for sure, but if you're patient, and let the film take you, you'll get something that is creepy, intense, disturbing, and fantastic, Alien is definitely worth watching.
No comments:
Post a Comment