It's virtually impossible to write a proper synopsis for this movie, as
it essentially consists of writings by William S.Burroughs, read by
himself and contemporaries, and accompanied by soundbites somehow fitting
his story, set to a patchwork of images seemingly (but only seemingly)
from all over the place. The story starts out as a pretty routine
science fiction tale of the alien invasion variety, with criminals from
planet Nova trying to take over earth, but the Nova police, a disorganized
guerilla-style law enforcement organisation, is deployed to erradicate the
threat from Nova, thereby making itself obsolete. Soon though the story
veers off and becomes a tad incomprehensible from a narrative point of
view, but at the same time it comes up with an endless array of
fascinating supernatural details and at the same time becomes the perfect
yet far-out commentary of its time (the 1950's and 60's) that nevertheless
still feels fresh decades after it was written. So much for the
source material, anyways. In his interpretation of Burroughs' writings,
director Andre Perkowski chooses not to take the academic approach and try
to bring the material to the screen word by word, but instead collects
snippets from obscure science fiction, crime, courtroom and war movies
from Burroughs' time as well as TV commercials, newsreel footage, public
service announcements and educational films - in other words everything
that might consciously or unconsciously have influenced Burroughs -, mixes
all of them together wildly, and then sets them to the story in a way that
the images - sometimes drastically altered from their original form -
actually follow the flow of the narrative and contribute to it without
trying to take it over. Now all of this can amount to anything
from a slight embarrassement to a pointless evening of nostalgia, but
thanks to Perkowski's apparently almost encyclopedic knowledge of vintage
films, and his expertise when it comes to editing (both on an artistic and
a technical level) makes this a triplike experience that (at almost three
hours of running time) still manages to remain entertaining throughout as
well. Recommended.
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