Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#26 Post by The Narrator Returns » Wed Mar 12, 2014 9:51 pm

To prepare you for alien Scarlett Johansson murdering Scotsmen, here's Glazer's ad for Flake Chocolate, starring Denis Lavant as the Devil. It's just as amazing as that description makes it sound.
Last edited by The Narrator Returns on Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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FerdinandGriffon
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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#27 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Wed Mar 12, 2014 10:55 pm

The Narrator Returns wrote:To prefer you for alien Scarlett Johansson murdering Scotsmen, here's Glazer's ad for Flake Chocolate, starring Denis Lavant as the Devil. It's just as amazing as that description makes it sound.
Much, much better than a Flake.

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colinr0380
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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#28 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Mar 13, 2014 2:29 pm

Someone has never had a Sherry trifle with a whipped cream and Flake topping! (according to Wikipedia the name trifle apparently originated in Glasgow, so there's your connection to Under The Skin!)

Very excited after reading the reviews for the film, though I'm most interested in comparing it with Beyond The Black Rainbow!

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Finch
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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#29 Post by Finch » Thu Mar 13, 2014 3:10 pm

Deliberately stayed away from reviews, going to see it tomorrow at 1pm.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#30 Post by Roger Ryan » Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:33 pm

A New York Times story on the film comparing it to Kubrick (!) and to the more psychological science fiction movie fare.

I'm still trying to figure out what film that "SOLARIS" still is from...since I'm pretty sure it isn't from Tarkovsky's production!

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tenia
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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#31 Post by tenia » Mon Mar 31, 2014 1:36 pm

I genuinely liked it, but honestly, the 2nd half is much too conventional to hold up against the 1st half, much more captivating.

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#32 Post by ianthemovie » Thu Apr 03, 2014 8:44 am

I saw an advance screening of this last night and really loved it--extraordinary visuals, great atmosphere, and compelling story. It's true that the second half has a stronger (and perhaps more conventional) narrative thrust but the story goes into such unexpected places that I didn't mind.

Glazer and his producer did a Q&A afterward and mentioned quite a bit about the novel (which I haven't read). It sounds like they stripped away quite a bit of the original story in order to create something more ambiguous and formally experimental, which I think worked quite well--though some audience members were noticeably disgruntled/confused by this film for various reasons. On the whole I found it to strike quite a good balance between experimentation and conventional narrative storytelling. Glazer and the producer also talked about about how much of the film was shot surreptitiously by hidden cameras, with Johansson's character improvising with non-actors, which I found to be a complete surprise.

A couple of clarification questions for those who have seen the film:
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Did Johansson's character actually lose her alien power to kill men at some point in the film? Or is it that she had control over when and where she used that power? She lets the physically disabled man go free even after (presumably) having had sex with him; was it that she simply felt sorry for him and took pity on him? Is it possible that she did something to turn him into an alien as well? I ask this because we then see the man on the motorbike rush in, track down the disabled man, and kill him (or so I assumed). Right before letting the disabled man go, SJ looks in the mirror at her face, which seems to be a moment at which her conscience awakens. I guess I'm just not clear--since she doesn't kill anyone else for the rest of the film--whether she has decided at this point to no longer do so, or whether she has somehow lost her ability to do so.

Relatedly, if she does still have the power to kill, I couldn't understand why she doesn't use it to defend herself against her attacker in the last scene. Again, is the point that she's trying to live as a human, even when that means leaving herself vulnerable to pain, or is it that she is somehow physically incapable of leading men into the "death pool"? (It seemed to me that this would be the ideal time to make use of that power if she still had it.)

Lots of parallels here to Her, as many others will no doubt observe. As a narrative about an alien being longing to be human and opening herself up to all that that entails, I much preferred this.

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#33 Post by JamesF » Mon Apr 07, 2014 1:50 pm

Excellent piece - "the tragedy of Johansson's Laura trying to claim her sexuality - and body - as her own"

Regarding the opening...
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While I couldn't quite make out the face of the dying woman being stripped by Laura at the beginning - wondering at first if Johansson was playing both roles - did anyone else think that this was another alien temptress who developed feelings as Laura does later, and was similarly punished for it?

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tenia
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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#34 Post by tenia » Mon Apr 07, 2014 5:23 pm

ianthemovie wrote:
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Did Johansson's character actually lose her alien power to kill men at some point in the film? Or is it that she had control over when and where she used that power? She lets the physically disabled man go free even after (presumably) having had sex with him; was it that she simply felt sorry for him and took pity on him?
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I do think she felt someone as lonely as her, and started to actually feel something close to humanity. This is the turning point of the movie for Laura, where she goes from complete feeling emptinesse to the beginnings of her feelings.

I also do think it might be more link to the feeling of loneliness than to the discovery of feelings themselves.
ianthemovie wrote:
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Is it possible that she did something to turn him into an alien as well? I ask this because we then see the man on the motorbike rush in, track down the disabled man, and kill him (or so I assumed).
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For me, Laura let him into her lair, had sex with him, then let him go. Due to this, the motorbike guy has to "clean the mess", chase the poor guy and probably kills him.
ianthemovie wrote:
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Relatedly, if she does still have the power to kill, I couldn't understand why she doesn't use it to defend herself against her attacker in the last scene. Again, is the point that she's trying to live as a human, even when that means leaving herself vulnerable to pain, or is it that she is somehow physically incapable of leading men into the "death pool"? (It seemed to me that this would be the ideal time to make use of that power if she still had it.)
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That's the point which is the most unclear for me. I don't know if she was testing herself, or the guard, or simply gave in to the brutality of mankind in some kind of assisted suicide. I think she still can kill, maybe not outside her lair though, but that she at least chose to catch the attention of the guard by using the truck horn.

Or, it's something she didn't plan at all. I don't know.

But for me, there's some degree of willingness in the choice of horning at the guard, and then letting him kill her. Maybe, linked to what Screen Crush writes about, the assault left her in a shock state.

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#35 Post by Illithid Dude » Tue Apr 08, 2014 8:48 pm

I took it a little differently.
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I agree that the alien let the deformed man go because she felt a certain amount of empathy for him, but I don't think she had sex with him. Later, when she does try and have sex with the man, she recoils, and begins to check her vagina with the lamp. I believe she was looking for tears in her human skin. Just as she can't eat human food, she can't have sex. She simply doesn't have the request holes to do so, and since the man was trying to force his penis into something that didn't exist, it causes the faux-human skin to tear. As such, she couldn't have had sex with the deformed man.

The reason she didn't fight her rapist is because she couldn't. She never physically attacked her victims, but instead lead them into a room and let them sink bellow the black goo. I don't think she has any actual fighting or killing skills.

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#36 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Wed Apr 09, 2014 4:34 am

I can't quite put my finger on why Under the Skin doesn't quite work for me. And I had really high hopes for it as well. Maybe it's because I loved the Faber novel and Glazer's film really just takes the central idea of an alien in Scotland and ditches everything else I liked. It was the thoughts of Isserly's passengers, in the thick Scottish accents, that provided a lot of the humour, which this film has none of. I guess a lot of what happens in the book is largely unfilmable, so Glazer has to work with what he can. I thought it was decent enough, but a bit underwhelming sadly.

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tenia
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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#37 Post by tenia » Wed Apr 09, 2014 8:01 am

Illithid Dude wrote:I took it a little differently.
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I agree that the alien let the deformed man go because she felt a certain amount of empathy for him, but I don't think she had sex with him. Later, when she does try and have sex with the man, she recoils, and begins to check her vagina with the lamp. I believe she was looking for tears in her human skin. Just as she can't eat human food, she can't have sex. She simply doesn't have the request holes to do so, and since the man was trying to force his penis into something that didn't exist, it causes the faux-human skin to tear. As such, she couldn't have had sex with the deformed man.

The reason she didn't fight her rapist is because she couldn't. She never physically attacked her victims, but instead lead them into a room and let them sink bellow the black goo. I don't think she has any actual fighting or killing skills.
Yes, that's actually a possibility.
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But my question is not about not fighting, but not running away. Even more, it seems she ran towards her death.

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#38 Post by JamesF » Wed Apr 09, 2014 8:58 am

Illithid Dude wrote:
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I agree that the alien let the deformed man go because she felt a certain amount of empathy for him, but I don't think she had sex with him. Later, when she does try and have sex with the man, she recoils, and begins to check her vagina with the lamp. I believe she was looking for tears in her human skin. Just as she can't eat human food, she can't have sex. She simply doesn't have the request holes to do so, and since the man was trying to force his penis into something that didn't exist, it causes the faux-human skin to tear. As such, she couldn't have had sex with the deformed man.
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The way I took it in the sex scene (which I've heard echoed elsewhere, including the BBFC consumer advice) was that he had already ejaculated inside her and she didn't know what it was. Yours makes sense too though.

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#39 Post by warren oates » Wed Apr 09, 2014 1:55 pm

I like tenia's interpretation of a lot of the details, including exactly how those mysterious encounters go down and what that means for her later attempts to interact with
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her temporary "boyfriend" and final attacker.
The film is a knockout technically and aesthetically, with some of the best sound design I've heard in a theater in years, especially that horrifying sounds of those
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captured guys in goo trying to scream out to each other. The sound of the newest capture's eyebrows blinking in the the goo is worth the price of admission alone.
I'm interested in thirtyframesasecond's memory of the novel because it certainly explains a lot about how this sort of story could have worked in a different medium. With access to the thoughts of her passengers there's not just more dramatic irony but, alas, some actual dramatic interest.

I don't think I've ever seen a film with a less "relatable" protagonist. And I mean that in the broadest possible sense. I'm not complaining that she's not nice or shiny happy normative. I'm complaining that it's literally structurally and by the filmmaker(s) conscious design impossible to have a theory of her mind, to understand what she's trying to do, how it matters to her, what happens when she makes decisions and what, in any way, they might mean for her or to her. It's easier to relate to the T-1000 or HAL or Babe or Wall-E or Balthazar. It's even easier to relate to the anti-hero psychopath protagonists of Pscyho, Michael or Henry: Portrait of Serial Killer, because even though their behavior is at the extremes of humanity, we can still understand what their abhorrent goals are, how they are trying to achieve them and what happens if they fail. It's like Jonathan Glazer read David Mamet's famous The Unit memo and decided to make a narrative film completely contradicting it (and yet ironically proving Mamet right!).

I get the concept, I do. The idea is to be utterly true to her completely "alien" nature. But really, it's like having the planet Solaris as your protagonist. There's a reason we come at that story through Kelvin, don't you know. And it's simply this: because a completely alien presence isn't just weird and mysterious, it's by definition, unknowable within our terrestrial human paradigm.

Glazer's natural inclination as a storyteller (at least in this one, many of his videos and Birth) seems oriented toward withholding, mystery and minimalism, which tends to further exacerbate all of the narrative difficulties involved in having a sort of absolute cipher as a main character.

And yet? The film very much sneakily and self-dishonestly wants to have it both ways. A few of the numerous examples off the top of my head:
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1) She lets the Elephant Man guy go. Why? Empathy? What the what the? For his niceness, his disfigurement or both? Before this moment we have no prior evidence that she's got anything like a human capacity for fellow feeling. We don't know her true form (do we even glimpse it in the end?) We don't know if she's even actually gendered in any way it would matter to us where she's from. We just don't know. Yet the film very much invites us to read this in only one way -- as her somehow developing and acting on human-like feelings. And if you're arguing it doesn't, then the very act itself and the narration of it is pointless and the film should have ended an hour or so ago.

2) She tries a piece of cake. Why? She clearly doesn't need to eat. As tenia speculates above, she might not even have the right holes! And she barfs it back up. Poor thing! Or is she? We can't know because she's never previously expressed a desire to eat (or say, a desire to desire or to feel and experience human things, like, for example that other much less alien incarnation of Scarlett Johansson as Samantha in Her). Is she simply trying to imitate those around her, to have some kind of modicum of cover for her status as a diner at that restaurant? Why not just order tea then?

3) She defies the motorcycle man... Or does she? We know they are alien colleagues. We know he's got some kind of preternatural surveillance connection with her or at least with their safe house. We know he's kind of a troubleshooter and enabler if not strictly a superior. But that's all we really know. Frankly, from everything that Glazer withholds, they might not even be all that individuated. Where they're from they could be bots, borgs, hive-mind-melded drones, etc. We don't even know enough about their relationship to understand what's supposed to be her transgression of simply stopping the harvest and letting Elephant Guy go. And in any case, he handles the clean-up of that affair efficiently enough.

4) She's attacked by a rapist, who, since she can't seduce him, destroys her Earthling disguise and immolates her. Horrible! But, on second thought, not so bad at all if she doesn't even really have feelings or a life in the way we understand them. She might just have sensors and be rebooted somewhere else. We can't even know that she feels anything like pain. (She certainly seems impervious to cold) Her expressions of fear could be just like the expressions of seduction we see her practicing earlier, purely functional, mimicked until correct and committed to memory for use interacting with humans. Unless... Unless we're just supposed to anthropomorphize her, but only when it's convenient for the film!

In the end we can't really say from any available evidence in the film that she ends up "feeling" anything. And anything we feel for her has to do only with the fact that she -- unknowable under her skin -- is played on the surface by Scarlett Johansson. That puts the audience in the same place as her victims. And that dynamic is interesting. But it's not interesting enough to carry a feature length film.

If we believe the film's conceit, if we trust in it fully and go with it only as far as we're rationally able to, then we can't really be said to know so many of the things about her that the film needs to operate on the most basic moment-to-moment level. There's a kind of unresolvable fundamental contradiction at the heart of the whole endeavor that's only being acknowledged when it serves the filmmakers to do so, when they feel like highlighting it or playing around with it but not when it would threaten to render their entire exercise meaningless, or perhaps even worse, boring.

I'm actually not demanding more backstory either. I'm not sure it would help, for instance, to know that she's after these men for their use as an edible delicacy on her home planet the way the novel spells it out. What I'm saying is that the film imagines that it's being so clever and coy withholding so much, but that it fails to simply set up and pay off even the most minimal rules of its own world in a way that justifies its existence as a feature film.

For I'd argue that literally nothing can be said to have changed for the protagonist by the end of the film. Some things happen to her, but without any framework for understanding what they might mean for her, there is no story.
Within the extremely narrow limits that Glazer's set for himself, the result is not uninteresting to watch as a narrative. Just perhaps not nearly interesting enough to watch for two whole hours. At half or a third of the length it might have played much better.

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tenia
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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#40 Post by tenia » Wed Apr 09, 2014 3:23 pm

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warren oates wrote: 1) She lets the Elephant Man guy go. Why? Empathy? What the what the? For his niceness, his disfigurement or both? Before this moment we have no prior evidence that she's got anything like a human capacity for fellow feeling. We don't know her true form (do we even glimpse it in the end?)
I believe she simply met someone human, but kind of like her. Some kind of human alien, also alone and lonely, also rejected.
As for the true form, Glazer said in Sight & Sound that, for him, the closest the viewer gets from the real alien form is a black screen.
warren oates wrote:2) She tries a piece of cake. Why? She clearly doesn't need to eat. As tenia speculates above, she might not even have the right holes! And she barfs it back up. Poor thing! Or is she? We can't know because she's never previously expressed a desire to eat (or say, a desire to desire or to feel and experience human things, like, for example that other much less alien incarnation of Scarlett Johansson as Samantha in Her). Is she simply trying to imitate those around her, to have some kind of modicum of cover for her status as a diner at that restaurant? Why not just order tea then?
To be fair, Illithid Dude has written about this theory, not me. :wink:
For me, she just starts to have some kind of curiosity. For me, Elephant Guy opened her to this curiosity, because she saw there is a possibility of her having common points with human people. Does she wants to see how many ? How far it goes ? Maybe she's just trying her skin, see what he can or can't do.
warren oates wrote:3) She defies the motorcycle man... Or does she? We know they are alien colleagues. We know he's got some kind of preternatural surveillance connection with her or at least with their safe house. We know he's kind of a troubleshooter and enabler if not strictly a superior. But that's all we really know. Frankly, from everything that Glazer withholds, they might not even be all that individuated. Where they're from they could be bots, borgs, hive-mind-melded drones, etc. We don't even know enough about their relationship to understand what's supposed to be her transgression of simply stopping the harvest and letting Elephant Guy go. And in any case, he handles the clean-up of that affair efficiently enough.
I don't think she defies him in any way. She's just doing things he then need to take care of. There's no sign of struggle, of conflict between them (and I don't recall them having even a prolonged contact to begin with).
warren oates wrote:If we believe the film's conceit, if we trust in it fully and go with it only as far as we're rationally able to, then we can't really be said to know so many of the things about her that the film needs to operate on the most basic moment-to-moment level.
I think there is something much more interesting in the movie than her, maybe the whole surrounding of the movie.

I liked to know that the male preys (I don't think there's any other way to put it) were non-actors, just regular fellows passing by, being seduced by Scarlett Johansson (and they didn't recognize her), and then, everything is blended ito a clear fiction.
After a couple of occurences of this scheme, the fiction and the reality is blurred well enough to be very interesting.

But there is things in the sub-text, about sexual preying, seduction and all, which I found very captivating. Also the fact that with their thick accent, with English not being my native language, it made the regular Glasgwegian people a lot alien to me. :P

But I agree with you : once the movie goes past this, it's much less interesting. It's too down to earth and starts to show very quickley its limits.

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#41 Post by warren oates » Wed Apr 09, 2014 3:34 pm

Not that I don't think you're generally right about the film's intentions. Just that everything you've said is still in the kind of facile, straightforwardly anthropomorphic vein that the film pretends to forgo for its first half. Another way of putting it is the film very much wishes to have consequences without actions, or at least without comprehensible actions.

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#42 Post by ianthemovie » Thu Apr 10, 2014 9:38 am

Great points, both.
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Whether she is in fact only a robot/machine/alien or something closer to human, I was willing to empathize with this character as she proceeds to test the limits of her identity. The comparison to Her is apt, because I saw both characters as having a similar arc. I find it no more difficult to buy the fact that an alien life-form might begin to develop human emotions and the desire to experience physical sensations than that an artificial intelligence program might do the same. While it's true that we don't know what her initial motivations are for killing--in fact, this seems to be purely "instinctual" or programmed--her later actions seemed to me quite believable, as she appears to be motivated by the desire to experience bodily pleasure or satisfaction, whether through sex or eating, or the desire for self-preservation, as when she tries to escape her attacker. (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein also seems to be an obvious point of comparison here.) She might also be motivated by self-preservation in the restaurant scene, if we take it as a given that she's used to feeding on her victims and hasn't had any in a while. It seems comparable to a scene of a vampire trying to ingest something other than human blood and vomiting it back up. (What movie am I getting that image from?)

I'm embarrassed to admit that It honestly hadn't occurred to me that she needs to be in her lair in order to kill men, but that makes sense. I guess I prefer to think of the scenes with the black pool--including the bit with the two submerged victims--as symbolic rather than literal, and therefore not necessarily tied to the space of that house. It seemed to me that in those scenes we are so far outside the realm of reality that this is only a "poetic" representation of what is actually happening to the victims, which could be either more horrifying or simply less visually interesting than the black-pool device. But I suppose it's possible to make a case for the opposite. It would certainly explain why she isn't able to fend off her attacker in the final scene.

By the way, where are people getting the name Laura from? I don't recall it ever being used in the film, and all of the characters are unnamed in the end credits. And I believe the novel uses a different name for this character, no?

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#43 Post by yann » Sat Apr 12, 2014 11:35 am

I don't necessarily need relatable characters or narrative handholding to appreciate a film, my problem with "Under the Skin" was rather that I felt it was completely vacuous and pointless. One can of course force all sorts of subtexts and themes onto this film precisely because it's pretty much a blank canvas - but frankly this is more than anything else an indication that the director lost control of the material or didn't really know what to do with it in the first place. What I read about the making of this film could support this impression. To me it felt like a very well done student short blown up to feature length. That said there are a few atmospherically very strong scenes and the sound design is excellent.

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#44 Post by criterion10 » Sat Apr 12, 2014 5:30 pm

*I don't believe there are any spoilers in my review, though I would recommend seeing the film before reading any thoughts on it.

Under the Skin is an art film with a capital “A,” a film in which director Jonathan Glazer has broken down narrative structure to its very core and created a cinematic experience like none other that relies mostly on visual images and visual storytelling. (I am still perplexed at the fact that the film is currently playing in not one but two multiplex theaters near me.)

The story is essentially what one would expect to find in an old-fashioned B-movie from past eras (the killer score from Mica Levi even at times feels like a throwback). Glazer is obviously not interested in this, however, a “story” in the traditional sense. Even the dialogue becomes secondary to the visual design of the film (a good portion of it is dowsed in thick, Scottish accents and incomprehensible anyway, possibly meant to resemble Johansson’s character being an outsider, disoriented by the world around her).

Glazer’s direction is especially significant for his ability to balance the artistry of Under the Skin with the basics of a familiar narrative. What I mean is that, while the film may be odd, surreal, perplexing, and impenetrable at times, there is still the basic skeleton of a story driving the film forward. In the end, I was surprised by how much I was able to take away from the film beneath its surface. Glazer completely understands the film he wants to make, what he is trying to say, and this helps film achieve its aforementioned balance.

Many have likened Glazer to both Kubrick and Roeg, and while the comparisons are somewhat apt, the majority of what he establishes here is entirely his own. Some images do feel like moments one would expect from the final moments of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Scarlett Johansson’s character does share a striking visual resemblance with Mick Jagger from Performance; neither of these comparisons are caveats though, merely observations.

The Performance comparison is an interesting one though, as both films arguably deal with the common theme of duality. Glazer encodes this theme in the surrealistic visuals of Johansson's "lair" (for lack of a better word).

In the acting department, Scarlett Johansson is excellent in the lead role. It is a subtle, nuanced performance, often relying on her facial reactions, the way she interacts with others, and her Scottish accent. She perfectly nails every aspect of it.

What is most significant about Johansson though is really her character, and how both her and Glazer manage to bring a great level of humanity to an extra-terrestrial being. A large theme of the film is Johansson’s desire to become human, and it is necessary for the film’s audience to connect with her on some level. Had the film felt cold and distant, this aspect would have failed.

Another interesting aspect is that when Johansson’s alien first reaches Earth, Glazer photographs everything through her point of view: the shots of the streets, the faces of individuals, and the crowds at a mall. Seeing these images on a daily basis, we are accustomed to them, yet everything still looks foreign, causing us to feel as if we are an alien, gazing down at an unfamiliar world, submersing ourselves in its culture.

One could possibly interpret this to be presenting a pessimistic view on our society, how out of balance we are with the individuals around us. This pessimistic view of humanity and human nature is something that I feel ties into the eventual resolution, one that I am sure will divide audiences (as the entire film itself will).

Jonathan Glazer’s return to the big screen after nine years is one of the most unique and spellbinding films in recent memory. It is a sensory and audial experience that simply demands to seen on the big screen.

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#45 Post by Black Hat » Mon Apr 14, 2014 2:42 pm

There are things we do, like for instance, binge watch a tv show on Netflix for eight hours, what we eat when we're high or drunk at three in the morning, cheat on your significant other, that you very much enjoy but aren't proud of. Some movies work in much the same way. Under the Skin is not one of those movies. Glazer's film has dumb and bad sprinting against each other until by the end of the film it proved that it's the class of both categories. I seriously question the intelligence of anyone who thought this was good.

Scarlett Johannsson drives around for two hours asking people for directions, offers some of them a ride, has the most banal conversation known to man before doing who knows what and some people are calling this film high art? No. Just because a work makes zero sense with characters who are uninteresting it doesn't mean that it's flying over people's heads and smart people are supposed to fawn over it like some film school freshman. It reminds me of what I think Pauline Kael said, that there are people who will like a book as long as it's leather bound.

There was not one single intelligent or funny line uttered in this film. I challenge anyone who has seen this horrendous pile of crap to give me one. To anybody going down the 'oh the visual imagery was stunning' road, please. There was not a single image or shot from the film that was innovative or original, most of it was a bad rip off of early 90s Madonna Mark Romanek videos crossed with bits of Tarkovsky raindrops are falling on my head and the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind. As for the 'really cool' score, has anybody actually heard Miccachu's music? Based on that how can any intelligent person conclude, "You know who'd be great at scoring a film? Micachu."

It gets better and by better I of course mean worse but at least this bit was funny: the film turns when she picked up the elephant man on his way to Tesco in the middle of the night because what else would the elephant man be doing? She forces him to look at her (because you know he's grotesque), told him he had nice hands (his fingernails were filthy tho), made love to him (he's a virgin!) and let him go (she has a conscious!). Yeah couldn't foresee any of that happening, was really blinded from the scene's level of high art, originality and intelligence.

People are so desperate to be cool that they're comparing this defective cinema to Nick Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth. Now there is a faction who believe the mid 70s Bowie star vehicle to be as much of an abomination as this Scarlett Johannsson star vehicle, in that case compare away. As for the others, fans of the Bowie movie, like myself, would tell you that his film was smart, sweet and very funny which kinda connects back to the whole smart thing. It also had Rip Torn's tiny wang and you there's no way Under the Skin can be compete with that.

If you're not into smart things, enjoy bad imitations of dated imagery that wasn't that great in the first place scored to the sounds of kitchen utensils being flushed down the toilet then Under the Skin is the film for you. High art. Totally. If I lived in the UK I would demand an investigation into how my tax money could be used to pay for this rubbish. The BFI should be ashamed of themselves.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#46 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Apr 14, 2014 4:16 pm

Wow, questioning the intelligence of 85% of notable film critics plus a countless number of filmgoers - that seems rational of you. I seriously question the intelligence of anyone who could possibly take your rambling, embittered review that rarely even addressed what you disliked about the film seriously.

criterion10

Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#47 Post by criterion10 » Mon Apr 14, 2014 5:37 pm

Black Hat wrote:Scarlett Johannsson drives around for two hours asking people for directions, offers some of them a ride, has the most banal conversation known to man before doing who knows what
If you're going to criticize a movie, at least be honest and don't be hyperbolic. Johansson's "driving around" ends about halfway through the 108-minute film. And, if you did a bit of research, you would know that many of the men she speaks with are actually non-actors, average pedestrians who were filmed with hidden cameras to facilitate realistic reactions. The conversations are meant to feel real, not theatrical, and Glazer himself said that the conversations themselves, the actual words spoken, aren't so much of importance as is the basic act of what is going on in the scenes.
Black Hat wrote:There was not one single intelligent or funny line uttered in this film. I challenge anyone who has seen this horrendous pile of crap to give me one.
There's barely any dialogue in the film. It is most definitely supposed to be a different kind of film, an experience littered with very little dialogue, a "visual" (you obviously weren't impressed by the visuals, but I won't argue there; too subjective of an argument). Why, in this case, does there have to be a script filled with "intelligent" or "funny" lines?

It's fine if you're not a fan of the film, but instead of merely complaining and criticizing everyone else for being a pretentious idiot, it would be better if you offered some valid criticisms that you felt were wrong with the film.

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#48 Post by Black Hat » Mon Apr 14, 2014 6:22 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:Wow, questioning the intelligence of 85% of notable film critics plus a countless number of filmgoers - that seems rational of you. I seriously question the intelligence of anyone who could possibly take your rambling, embittered review that rarely even addressed what you disliked about the film seriously.
Dude if the best rebuttal your mind can come up with is that 85% of critics liked it so therefore that means it's good or smart, I'm sure you'll love the film.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#49 Post by matrixschmatrix » Mon Apr 14, 2014 6:25 pm

Well, I think the point is that actually addressing the film is somewhat more productive than attacking the people who liked it- and where you do address the film, it's in such hyperbolic terms that it's difficult to take seriously.

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Re: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

#50 Post by Black Hat » Mon Apr 14, 2014 7:08 pm

criterion10 wrote:If you're going to criticize a movie, at least be honest and don't be hyperbolic. Johansson's "driving around" ends about halfway through the 108-minute film.
Yes because her as, you, yourself acknowledge, driving around for 54 minutes as opposed to 108 really makes the film sound so much more interesting.
criterion10 wrote:And, if you did a bit of research, you would know that many of the men she speaks with are actually non-actors, average pedestrians who were filmed with hidden cameras to facilitate realistic reactions.
How is this relevant? Do you always 'research' films you go see and does your 'research' into films usually determine what you think about them instead of the film itself? Seems to be an odd approach but hey if that's your thing. I'm also familiar with this style of cinema and have seen it executed countless times (Pasolini,Bresson, Kiarostami to name three) but you know those guys were kinda smart and actually knew/know something about their craft. Glazer is just incompetent.

criterion10 wrote:Glazer himself said that the conversations themselves, the actual words spoken, aren't so much of importance
Ah well it's good to know that he's in on the joke, then again he probably isn't, is he? I appreciate the comedy in him making a terrible movie then openly declaring that his script was of no importance as if we're supposed to be wowed by this. I mean seriously, this man who admits that none of the words spoken in his film are important, you're trying to tell me is an intelligent, competent filmmaker? He sounds like a moron. No, he sounds exactly like the kind of idiot I thought directed Under the Skin.
criterion10 wrote:It's fine if you're not a fan of the film, but instead of merely complaining and criticizing everyone else for being a pretentious idiot, it would be better if you offered some valid criticisms that you felt were wrong with the film.
I offered plenty of valid criticisms of the film, none of which you addressed mind you, except to say the director said the dialogue of the film didn't matter. If anything your post has done a wonderful job proving how dumb this movie was.

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