Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Starman / USA / 1984

Jeff Bridge’s Starman simplifies each conversation he has, reducing it to succinct declarative statements or simple questions. His desire for knowledge and capacity for trust engender his statements with a child’s earnest curiosity. It is for this reason that his sole companion – Jenny, whose deceased husband he has embodied – is initially terrified of him. He looks exactly like her dead husband, but the mannerisms and personality are disturbingly amiss.

Jenny will grow increasingly more affectionate toward Starman—this is by some measure a plot contrivance, because she falls in love with him in less than three days, but it is, I think, an action that establishes her urgent necessity for love and, more significantly, closure. Her husband’s death isn’t illuminated, but you get the impression that it happened suddenly, and has depressed her so much that her initial terror and subsequent attraction to Starman are wholly justifiable responses. Her husband’s death and miraculous reincarnation as an extra-terrestial being have blended her emotions with great velocity; they’ll manifest and subdue regularly until they subside accordingly within her emotional spectrum.

Another catalyst for Jenny’s affection is the temporal nature of her relationship with Starman. She knows he will be gone in three days, giving her last chance for closure a definite amount of time in which she must purge her insecurities. In the film’s momentous, enthralling final shot, she glances not with desperation but contentedness as her lover ascends toward the heavens.

by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Sony Pictures DVD
07 Sep 2007 5:09 PM | Submit Comment