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MEMORY: THE ORIGINS OF ALIEN
Director: Alexandre O. Philippe MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:35 Release Date: 10/4/19 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 3, 2019 Director Alexandre O. Philippe has become something of a film historian by way of his documentaries. His latest is Memory: The Origins of Alien, which, obviously, documents the making of Ridley Scott's 1979 masterpiece about a crew aboard a spaceship as they're killed off by an apex predator. Philippe's documentary primarily focuses on the work of screenwriter Dan O'Bannon, whose idea for Alien came from a variety of sources—comic books, B movies, his own work on John Carpenter's sci-fi comedy Dark Star. O'Bannon's widow Diane offers a lot of anecdotal information, while assorted experts provide the background of the story and the cinematic climate of the time (Science-fiction was primarily for the mind or for escapist adventure tales at the time, and then Scott's film took it into the realm of visceral horror). All of this starts with promise, as Philippe tracks the long journey of O'Bannon's crafting of the story and the obstacles that arose as the film was about to be made. The biggest hurdle was convincing the studio that H.R. Giger was the right man to design the monster. The design made people uncomfortable, of course, with its overtly phallic nature (The experts get a little in the weeds with their interpretations of the larger meaning of this). When Scott (who only appears in archival interviews, strangely and unfortunately) came onboard, O'Bannon had his greatest ally. The lengthy discussion of how story and design elements came to be—consciously or subconsciously blending various myths—is fascinating. The theorizing about the grander meaning of that blend is less so. The major issue here is that Philippe spends so much time on the pre-production (not to mention the pre-pre-production) side of the story that there isn't much time devoted to the actual making of the film. The filmmaker certainly starts down that path, with some analysis of the film's first act. Much of the documentary's final section is devoted to the infamous "chest-bursting" scene, and then, the history, the analysis, and, really, the movie just ends. Memory: The Origins of Alien is admirable in its dissection of the creation of an idea. As analysis, the movie is hit-and-miss, and as an in-depth look into the actual making of Alien, it seems to forget that there's a whole lot of film remaining after the most famous scene. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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