Fine things age finely, or so I'm told, and appreciate with each experience. Like a slow sip from the edge of an antiquated merlot, there is a great deal of subtlety to be found in well-made things, layers beneath layers of tone and texture and the well-born fruit of meaningful effort. The same can be said of great cinema, I suppose, whatever its genre or style.
We call them "classics" and celebrate them whenever we get the chance, mostly showing off a nicely polished DVD collection or flocking to the latest theatrical re-release. So it's strange to associate a word that belies such eloquence with a movie that produces such terror, but over two decades ago, that it is exactly what visualist Ridley Scott accomplished with the release of his sci-fi masterpiece Alien.
It was nothing new at the time - part haunted house, part sci-fi thriller - but it was never the "what" of the film that gave its stature. It was the "how." With a painterly eye and a manic pace, Scott gave the shadows of the starship Nostromo a pulse of their own, a nearly intangible breath, with just enough darkness to conceal the slick grace of the Alien onboard. The quasi-gothic production design gave the ship its wonderful sense of age, with hanging chains clanking softly behind the heartbeat taping of falling water.
H. R. Giger's bio-organic creature design produced a sense of newness about this terrible creation, this perfectly-formed and savage monstrosity. And the terse, character-heavy script allowed for a manic, two-hour sprint through those shadowy halls, as one by one the crewmen fell away, until only an unlikely heroine named Ripley was left to slay the beast. While not terribly new, it was, in a few subtle ways, the first of a kind, the first modern exercise in kinetic and relentless character-killing, where style wins out over story yet somehow maintains its art. And perhaps, in a much larger sense, the past two decades of dead teenagers and masked villains have all been a sad kind of tribute to this incredible success, so rarely achieved in thrillers today.And now, nearly twenty-five years later, this classic film is returning to both screens and DVD players for an anniversary celebration, boasting a wonderful visual polish, a terrifying surround sound redesign, and a few extra minutes of footage that only adds to an already terrifying film. Thankfully enough, it's as effective today as it was in 1979, when Ripley first wielded her bursting flamethrower.
The visuals are superbly maintained and as crisp as ever, with the added soundtrack working as well as it's worked in any modern film since the advent of 5.1. With no added CGI or re-done FX work, the film still maintains a fraction of its age, which only ever works to its advantage. In some sense, it's wonderful to see a twenty year old film imagine a future that has, in many ways, already come and gone, gazing back at those bland, faded-green computer readouts with nary a graphic to be seen, when only wireframe was the best CG around.
Yes, indeed, this newest release of this classic film is every bit an improvement upon a thriller that's already difficult to improve upon, and if you've an ounce of sense, you'll head out to see it on the big screen. Where everyone can hear you scream.
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