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I ES Alien': real art or lowbrow trash? Pretentious critics bomb on this one by Ross Chapman Kubrick and Malick for its photographic excellence. But his real training came from TV. For years, Scott was a top director of television commercials - which, if you haven’t already noticed, in their best moments, manifest the most sophisticated direction, photography, and writing in the visual recording arts today. Composing with a visual vocabulary of both precise and concise images, Scott harvests from each shot rafts of anxiety. But it is this very anxiety to which so many object. Fear, somehow, is too coarse for “real” art. Critics and viewers alike sometimes seem to resent that the film frightened them. Many of them, apparently, would rather atrophy watching 3 cold, dead artifact like Manhattan than face the raw human emotion of panic. Whereas Manhattan prattles wearily on about emotions the fHm itself is to passionless to convey, Alien provides us a whole environment of passion. This passion is not a feat of cinematic masturbation as some have intimated. Unlike The Ridley Scott’s Alien may not only turn out to be the summer’s biggest box-office hit, it may also be one of this year’s least understood films. Even critics who gave it favorable reviews have characterized the film as “primatively simple, like any comic strip or B-movie in which ‘Beee! . . .’ is the most sophisticated discourse” to use the words of Newsweek ’s Jack Kroll.’ ONE THE EDGE OF THEIR SEATS; Signouray Waavar, itaaly-iawad alian that's hunting tham Yaphat Kotto, and Harry Daan Stanton hunt for tha Exorcist or Damien, Alien does not rely on triggering reflex action for its effect anymore than Psycho does. There are only two incidents of real gore in Alien, and the creature which decimates the crew is never clearly seen until the very end of the movie. Instead, the extreme anxiety experienced while watching the film is accomplished by masterful direction, a skillful use of the soundtrack, brilliantly baroque lighting, and sympathetic acting. presence. Skerritt, actress Signourey Weaver, and Kette are too earthy to become fleshy analogs for the ship’s abounding gadgetry. They bring to outer space pecuniary haggles, class distinction, domestic banter, and cunnilingus jokes. While contributing a large part of the film’s anxiety through their affecting characterizations, they also truck into Allen a bevy of intriguing subtexts. The ship, for example, is a mining tug owned by \The Company” which programs \Mother the vaguely omniscient computer that runs the ship while the crew sleeps in cryogenic chambers. With these hints of pernicious capitalism, we see that the dreaded alien isn’t the only beast on board. To draw things short, Allen is not dehumanizing because it deals with fear but is humanizing because it inspires and depicts fear artfully and in a dense human context of convincing characters and layers of subtexts dealing with the human predicaihent - both personal and social. Anxiety and brute panic, when created as skillfully as Ridley Scott has in Alien, are far more \artistic” than all the cool, tasteful ponderings of passion-poor aesthetics. In New York magazine, David Denby writes that “Despite all the gleaming technology, it’s a very primitive piece of work. After a while the scare tactics becqme completely obvious and mechanical, but the killings are so gratuitously horrible that we jump every time.’’ Indeed, critics have ascribed copious gore to the film. Frank Rich says in Time magazine that Alien “has enough gore to gross out children of all ages. What is missing is wit, imagination, and the vaguest hint of human feeling.’’ Tom Allen writes in The Village Voice that the film “obfuscates character, lolls indulgently .over the irrelevent, strenuously avoids enlightenment or inspiration and relentlessly zeros in on the mechanics of brutalization” — a strange remark for a man who deliriously embraced such dehumanizing trash as Midnight Express, Dawn of the Dead and Halloween ! Humanizing fear The cast (Tom Skerritt, Signourey Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Helm, and Yaphet Kette) lend a humanizing Afraid of fear What I see in these comments is a denegration of craft and naked emotion in favor of snobbish and tasteful notions of “serious” art. While the tremendous skill with which Scott scares us is acknowledged by nearly all, many critics object that he has in fact chosen to scare us. This is a grave error, for the skill in Alien is monumental. Scott’s first film, The Duellist, was a little seen work matching >;* < *> 4 *V*vK*v •>'*V*W* • Love At First Bite IPC| Starring George Hamilton, Susan St. James & Dick Shawn Evenings 7:30 & 9:30 pm Sun. 2, 3:45, 7:30, & 9:30 Sun. Matinees - $1.00 till 5 pm aplc roars!«* N f DPI ST fc MAPI 1 'HI &//t Joey Travolta in SUNNYSIDE <*> - / Evenings 7:45 & 9:45 pm Sun. 2:15,4,7:45, & 9:45 Sun. Matinee $1.00 till 5 pm
