Review of Alien (1979) by Swati — 05 Dec 2013

Ridley Scott is a master of world-building, no matter how small it is. Here he took us to a windy planet but mainly the setting was the spaceship Nostroma. A crew of seven is forced to investigate a signal from an unknown vessel. So a series of gruesome events unfold. Scott takes half an hour to introduce us to the characters and after that it is a ride of pure thrilling fright.

All the characters are sufficiently drawn and explored, but none more than the action-girl Ripley, the like of whom I have not seen elsewhere. She is a force of nature. The movie works because the characters that populate the environment are engaging and their fear feels real. What fascinated me was the fact that the major decisions taken by the crew are what probably I would have agreed to myself. What I mean is the plot did not come into being because of someone's idiocy, as it tends to in lesser films. Their main concern was survival and all other things were secondary.

The art direction and visual effects were jaw-dropping. Given that this movie was made in 1979, that's a huge achievement. On the contrary, I feel like modern space films tend to look cartoonish. The set design was very convincing and the feeling I got was that this actually happened somewhere in the universe but was only shot in the past. Weird but true. The only part where I felt the movie was really old was when the Mother computer comes to life, otherwise the interior of the ship was fascinating and I certainly believed Ridley Scott's vision of a future mega spaceship. The director's cut looked and sounded better than ever.

The creature alien is a parasitic organism that is at once frightening and intriguing, and has more than one trick up its sleeve. Just when you think you've got it figured out, Scott throws something more sinister at you than before. The suspense was palpable, and that is where he does best. The movie builds up from scene to scene, the previous one being out-shined by the new one constantly, until the climax when everything goes wrong at the worst possible moment. Scott proves himself a master of not only how a film should look and feel but also the narrative, which is where most modern science fiction films fail even though their effects get better and better.

There is not much to discuss about the plot without ruining the effect. The source of the alien species is not discovered, which I hoped in vain would be revealed in the sequel. And an explanation about the other alien is perhaps asking for too much. These were answers that I sought from the film before I was zapped from all logic and reason and forced to witness the horror these beings were capable of inflicting. Scott included absolutely everything that was needed to make the film work. I feel like he should have taken reins to make the sequel as well. Maybe we could have learnt something new about the aliens but who knows.

Ridley Scott may disagree, but I feel like this is his best work. It's a true masterpiece deserving of all the praise it receives. It could easily have been caught up in the trappings of the haunted house genre, but Scott skilfully manoeuvres it around to where he felt like a sense of awe and mystery would be evoked along-with the thrills associated with the genre. I have always felt like there is at least one great movie to be made in each genre, which awaits the right director, and Scott was perfect for this.