Starman (1984)
Directed by John Carpenter
Anyone who sees Starman as just another film in the wake of E.T. is both right and wrong. Right, because it undeniably shares the theme of an alien visitor struggling to adapt, aided by a devoted companion (this time female). Wrong, because Carpenter’s film is more of a serious parody of E.T., where Rambaldi’s little creature transforms into a Prince Charming for the female lead and a misunderstood Messiah for humanity. In Spielberg’s film, E.T.’s awkwardness and odd appearance made him endearing; in Starman, it’s the alien’s good looks and social clumsiness that win our sympathy.
In a way, Starman is like a Body Snatchers scenario flipped on its head. The idea of replicating a human body—this time for benevolent purposes—echoes Siegel’s film, and even those emotionless pod people had their own brand of awkwardness. (Some critics, like Olivier Assayas, Serge Le Peron, and Serge Toubiana, once speculated—less convincingly—that The Thing played out a similar premise, as discussed in their Cahiers du Cinéma interview.) Either way, the alien’s human form sets up a classic cinematic formula: the love story. While E.T. was a puppet that naturally had to bond with a child, Starman is a fully realized man—one who, at the right moment, even consummates that connection with his human companion.
But Carpenter’s allusive arsenal has more to offer. His protagonist is also a kind of Zelig—knowing nothing about Earth, he mimics whatever he sees and hears. With the tough, he acts tough; with the gentle, he is gentle. He picks up the Midwest’s drawl or laughs absurdly simply because his original model—the late husband of the female lead—was captured on camera with a smile. In a way, Starman is the positive counterpart to Carpenter’s Thing. Like the creature, he can take on any form, undergoes an astonishing metamorphosis, and is nearly inescapable. The crucial difference? He means no harm. Instead, it is the humans who embody The Thing’s menace—first presenting a friendly face (Voyager II’s message of peace), then responding to the alien’s mere presence with military hostility.
What truly matters is that, at least in terms of Carpenter’s personal style, Starman is not a typical Carpenter film. For one, it abandons the spatial confinement that defines much of his work, instead unfolding as a kind of road movie. In fact, as strange as it may seem, Starman can even be seen as an Easy Rider for the 1980s—only more fantastical, sci-fi, and cosmic. The two protagonists travel at least 2,000 kilometers through an America that reveals multiple faces. These faces are less folkloric and colorful than those in Hopper’s film, yet they remain recognizable portraits of a nation caught between good and evil, violence and human understanding.
It would be too easy to distill Starman into a simplistic moral: that Earth is not yet ready for superior alien beings, that humans are still too impulsive, primitive, and natural to engage with highly advanced intelligence and science. (Though, as the alien notes, “You are at your best when things are at their worst,” a sentiment that echoes Star Trek‘s philosophy on humanity.)
No, Starman is a bit more layered than it first appears. On one side, there’s the government officer and his soldiers, the ruthless hunter and his violent friends. But on the other, there’s not only the UFO expert but also everyday people—anonymous, generous, and kind—like the diner owner, the Midwesterner who gives the alien a ride, and the young man who helps the woman with her car. (Granted, this last one is too kind—his role in the roadblock scene, the rag bomb, and the diversion feels somewhat contrived, even if necessary for the plot to move forward.)
Ultimately, this is the America (or Earth) that matters. After encountering it, the alien can no longer see our planet as a jungle of wild apes. Scientifically and rationally, we may be behind, but the heart—the one that beats in tune with the cosmos—is alive and well in the ordinary man.
And since Starman is not about Earth in general but specifically about the United States, it naturally feels like a celebration of the common man—his generosity toward strangers, the needy, the forgotten (to borrow the Italian title of Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels). The diner owner, after all, is not so different from the kind-hearted man in Sturges’ film who takes pity on Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake, letting them eat breakfast in his café without paying.
So where, then, are the dark zones, the ghosts, the mysteries that Claver Salizzato rightly associates with Carpenter? The mystery in Starman leans more toward Christology than Gothic horror (though one must whisper this, lest the Vatican notices, launches a campaign, and gets the film pulled). The protagonist performs miracles—not just resurrecting a deer but also reviving a woman. And then there’s the conception of the child, somewhere between the Holy Spirit and the pagan myth of Danaë.
In fact, fertilization seems to occur not during the act itself but at the moment of parting, as a kind of golden rain softly descends upon the woman who looks upward—toward the realm of the gods. A realm that, of course, is not only above but also round, in keeping with sacred geometry. The spherical object given by Starman to the woman—so that she may one day pass it to their son, who “will know what to do with it”—further underscores the sacred nature of this offspring. On the symbolic meaning of the Sphere (not coincidentally a recurring motif here), scholarship is vast. One need only mention René Guénon’s The Symbolism of the Cross and Gilbert Durand’s The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary.
A Christology so conventional that it’s unclear whether the true Messiah is the father or the son. The young man the protagonist will presumably give birth to seems destined for a significant role—that of “one who teaches,” a Master. He will carry all the knowledge of his father, yet he will inevitably be different, if only because he was born of a mortal woman.
And so, from the cosmos comes a figure reenacting the myth of salvation—Starman is, at its core, a soteriological film. Carpenter had never made one before, but that’s fine. What matters is that his God (or Christ) stumbles over human words, moves awkwardly like a robot, and mimics everyone he encounters.
This, thankfully, is a human god. Even as audiences laugh at his clumsy gestures, they fail to grasp the underlying melancholy Carpenter weaves into this reflection—one that, for once, isn’t about the mysterious, the fantastic, or the terrifying, but something perhaps even more painful: what it means to be human.
— Cineforum, n. 246, August 1985
