{"id":3039,"date":"2012-07-03T00:15:24","date_gmt":"2012-07-03T06:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=3039"},"modified":"2012-07-03T00:15:24","modified_gmt":"2012-07-03T06:15:24","slug":"beings-beasts-and-machines-ready-for-their-close-ups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2012\/07\/beings-beasts-and-machines-ready-for-their-close-ups.html","title":{"rendered":"Beings, beasts and machines ready for their close-ups"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>Like a lot of people, I made a point of watching Ridley Scott\u2019s Alien<\/i> (1979) again before his prequel Prometheus<\/i> came out last month. One thing that struck me on this viewing was how frequently Scott uses close-ups of non-human faces, indeed of mere things<\/i>. I had certainly noticed individual shots on previous viewings, but it was only during my latest encounter with the film that all these images began to jostle together in my mind, and that I began to realize how Scott was using them to further one of the film\u2019s key elements, which is the recurrent blurring of the lines between human, animal and machine.<\/p>\n

Consider these images, captured from the film:<\/p>\n

First, the two helmets that happen to be sitting opposite the two computers that talk to each other; each computer\u2019s screen is reflected in one of the helmets\u2019 visors (and note, this is more or less how the film begins; at this point, all of the human characters are still in suspended animation):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Second, there is our final glimpse of the \u201cspace jockey\u201d, as Dallas begins to walk away and the camera zooms in past his helmet to dwell on what looks like an alien skull, lost in shadow:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Third, there is the look on the cat\u2019s face as it watches the adult alien kill the first of its victims; the human can be heard screaming off-screen, but the cat\u2019s face remains passive, more or less:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fourth, there is the head of Ash, the android, after it has been knocked clear off his shoulders; there are two shots from this angle, the second of which takes place after the rest of the body has begun lunging at the humans again (so there is an interesting contrast between the lifelessness of the face and the animation, as it were, of the body):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fifth, there is our last look at Ash a scene or two later, as the flames burn off his skin to reveal the mannequin-like face mold beneath:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And sixth, there is, of course the Xenomorph itself, the face of which is virtually featureless save for its two-stage mouth; there are many shots I could have picked for this creature, of course, but I like this one because it shows the alien contemplating the cat<\/i>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And after all we\u2019ve seen in these other close-ups, how does the movie end? With a close-up of Ripley\u2019s face in suspended animation:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to say too much about where I think this might be going, partly because I\u2019m still mulling it over myself. But I think it\u2019s instructive that screenwriter Dan O\u2019Bannon said he changed the screenplay\u2019s title from \u201cStar Beast\u201d to \u201cAlien\u201d partly because the word \u201calien\u201d works as both a noun and an adjective<\/a>. It\u2019s a word that can be applied to something other than extra-terrestrials; it\u2019s a word that can be applied to those things around us that are animal or machine, and are thus different from us, but it can also<\/i> be applied to those parts of us that feel strange and \u201cother\u201d precisely because they are not<\/i> animal or machine, or maybe even because they are<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s especially interesting, then, that the \u201cspace jockey\u201d shot above is a zoom shot, and not a static shot like most of the others. It is almost as though Ridley Scott was trying to draw our attention to the \u201cspace jockey\u201d in a way that suggests there is something extra important here \u2014 something that might give us a key to understanding what the movie is all about.<\/p>\n

And if part of the point of the film is the blurring of lines between being, beast and machine, then the \u201cspace jockey\u201d, as conceptualized here, is of course the most blurred entity in the entire film. As the pilot, apparently, of a doomed spaceship, it was presumably an intelligent being of some sort; but its appearance is like that of a beast, rather than anything we might recognize as human; and its body seems to grow out of the spaceship, so that it is not clear where organism ends and mechanism begins.<\/p>\n

Alas, as those who have seen Prometheus<\/i> know, Ridley Scott pretty much abandons everything the \u201cspace jockey\u201d stood for in his prequel. In the new continuity, the \u201cspace jockeys\u201d are actually just tall humanoids wearing a very peculiar kind of spacesuit, and it is fairly easy to separate the suits from the beings who wear them.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll have more to say about that later. But in the meantime, are there any significant close-ups in Prometheus<\/i>? Not really. There are one or two wide shots of giant face-statues, such as the one that appears at the top of this post, that look<\/i> like close-ups (which reminds me of an old Jim Emerson<\/a> post on Hitchcock\u2019s use of Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest<\/i>, incidentally). But apart from a rather silly scene in which a few people try to re-animate a 2,000-year-old decapitated head, nothing comes to mind.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like a lot of people, I made a point of watching Ridley Scott\u2019s Alien (1979) again before his prequel Prometheus came out last month. One thing that struck me on this viewing was how frequently Scott uses close-ups of non-human faces, indeed of mere things. I had certainly noticed individual shots on previous viewings, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[28,24,29,26,25,27],"class_list":["post-3039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-alfred-hitchcock","tag-alien","tag-jim-emerson","tag-north-by-northwest","tag-prometheus","tag-ridley-scott"],"yoast_head":"\nBeings, beasts and machines ready for their close-ups<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Like a lot of people, I made a point of watching Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) again before his prequel Prometheus came out last month. 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