Starman

Starman is a departure from a man mainly known for the horror genre. Carpenter who tends to write his own music for films left it to Jack Nitzsche, although I assumed for years it was Carpenter’s music with that stirring theme. I was mesmerised by this film when I saw it 30 years ago and it’s lost nothing of its charm and power since then even though the film has of course aged. The alien who arrives on Earth takes the form of Jeff Bridges the late husband of Karen Allen who still mourns him. Allen is of course uneasy about this arrival and Bridges needs to get to Arizona in three days so he can be reunited with his spacecraft and get back home. In the meantime he learns by observation and gets to communicate with others and more importantly, Allen. Jeff Bridge’s was rightly Oscar nominated for his role. He starts out as almost infant like when he arrives, learns to speak, move and navigate with a sense of wide eyed wonderment. The film is essentially a road/chase movie as the government and military are on the hunt for our alien with Allen wondering whether to abandon him. However the film tells us a lot about humans from the eyes of this visitor which also carries some slight religious symbolism. Starman gets Allen who could not conceive, pregnant for example. There is a story that director John Carpenter really disliked the film ET and decided to make his own version.