Not so much sci-fi, as curiously realistic

Rating: Null/10 (2 December 2001)

WARNING SPOILERS!
Though I had already seen this movie several times I was happy to watch it again during a film class in college called `Film and the American Hero'. The professor's goal obviously was to present a female protagonist for the course and he couldn't have done any better than the stirring character Ripley, played so dexterously by Sigourney Weaver.	Though this would have been a great film without her, Weaver is outstanding as the confident ship officer turned termagant in order to battle the redoubtable, invidious foe that is the alien. There is something indefinable about the expressions on her face that impel her character. Some sort of inner turmoil that surfaces in her countenance and mien. She is also so subtlety sexy! And if I may take a puerile moment; to see her scampering about in her underwear (obiter dictum--what a lithe, beautiful stomach) is a great amenity.

But it is more than the sylph that is Weaver that drives this motion picture. For me it is the `reality' of the show. So much so that I don't even categorize it as science-fiction. Even though it is set in the future in an unknown section of the universe you don't have to suspend disbelief because of the verisimilitude that director Ridley Scott creates. First he establishes characters that, even though they are placed in a time years from our own, they are still very authentic, complete with foibles and idiosyncrasies. They gripe, laugh, misjudge, and most of all fear. They show us that man as man has survived he also brings the concomitant social problems, in this case class struggle.
They also remind us that no matter what technological advances mankind discovers, we will always be human. Not that the machines are perfect. Scott creates an industrial background that is grimy and foreboding. It is purposely done so as to not give an illusion of a glossed-over future. Scott wants you to know that this version of the future will not be spotless. His machines are dirty, and function haphazardly from the granular video screens to malfunctioning motion-detectors. They are noisy and require repairs. The machines are not, shall we say, exactly simpatico. In fact they are in two exigent instances (the insidious android and the self-destructing vessel) they are arrantly malevolent. It is against this mise en scene that Scott adroitly makes us take into account the periphery of his camera shots while dangling cords and industrial works meld darkly into a baleful background. This is culminated in the shocking revelation that the creature has hidden itself on the shuttle among the machinery. What ultimately gives this film a noumenal aspect is the monster itself. Of all the characters the monster is perhaps the most `real'. This fierce beast is a quasi spider/wasp mixture and if we look at the horror of the everyday insect world (where blood is viciously drained from weaker life forms, and victims are implanted with eggs that survive like parasites on their tissue) we see how a creature sharing these characteristics, enhanced by size can be particularly virulent. It is how one would expect such an animal be (the acid-for-blood thing is a little far out but even so, it is one of the monster's most interesting features and nicely increases the tension by complicating how the crew has to handle destroying it).

The underlying symbolism of course is the feminine turmoil. The tunnels of the planet as well as the workings of the ship (called `Mother') clearly are a physical representation of the inner reproductive system/vaginal wall of a woman. The creature itself is a symbol or reproduction and evolution with its protean abilities. It is a paradox of growth and destruction. It represents the dichotomy of the life-giving femininity and the threat of male-dominated violence. Scott exemplifies this symbolism with the coterminous forced-fellatio scene (with a porno mag as an ordure touch) and the part of the film when the woman is killed by the alien as it advances upon her not recklessly, but slowly, furtively (seductively?) reaching a limb behind, and then up, her leg.

Of course the irony is that a woman destroys the evil entity in the end engendering a conclusion that poses the theory that survival is epicene. A very interesting concept.