Memory: The Origin of Alien (2019)

(On Cable TV, January 2020) I’d like to think that I knew quite a bit about Alien and its making—after all, the film (in its “Quadrilogy” boxset) even comes with its own three-hour-long making-of film, challenging anyone to add to that. But that’s exactly what Alexandre O. Philippe attempts with Memory: The Origin of Alien, a 90-minute attempt to explore the roots of the film through the lenses of its first screenwriter Dan O’Bannon and his inspirations. There are critics and cultural commentators bringing their perspective on the film, sometimes flagging underappreciated aspects of Ridley Scott’s direction and sometimes tackling bigger cultural issues through the movie. Perhaps the most successful section of Memory is its short presentation of O’Bannon’s life prior to Alien (through testimony from his widow, as O’Bannon passed away in 2009) and the catalogue of possible influences on his script—including the reminder that O’Bannon suffered (and eventually died) from severe Crohn’s Disease, something fit to make any Alien viewer say, “I knew it!” Of the commentators featured in the film, the most entertaining is easily TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, who brings his usual charismatic humour to explaining aspects of Alien’s lineage in earlier Science Fiction stories. On a thematic commentary level, the documentary is most successful pointing out subtle class rivalry aboard the Nostromo, and less convincing in admiring the film’s feminist content. Memory also loses itself in self-importance once it starts discussing Alien in a wider cultural zeitgeist, almost imbuing the film with mystical importance—look, it’s a classic already, there’s no need to make it a psychic projection of the noosphere’s anxieties. I’m also not that happy about the weight placed on the filming of the chest-burster sequence: Memory spends comparatively so much time on it, even placing it as its conclusion, that it seems to trivialize other aspects of the filming and leave us wanting more. This being said, Memory is a slick documentary with some lively tricks up its sleeve to jazz up talking-head footage and clips from the film. It doesn’t duplicate much of the existing documentary material on Alien, and it should make existing fans of the movie not only happy with the result but eager to re-watch it once again.