Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

[flyonthewall2983]

SpoilerShow

I'll grant you that it does leave a lot of questions. As it was used in the trailer, I thought it was an extraordinarily bleak image. I still think it is, but my first reaction to seeing the aftermath was slight disappointment. I tend to think less is more, but in a movie where a lot of that is already happening, maybe seeing that part of it would be more welcome. But you are right, in and of itself that scene is pretty damned chilling.

My interpretation is that they're using the skin as a matter of infiltration, and that they went after women first, so they can lure the men in. It really is a body-snatcher type story, but done in the most stunning way possible. It's not a particularly new idea, giving a B story to an A+ visualist/storyteller, but from my perspective it's almost always welcome.

[swo17]

I tend to think less is more

Well obviously, in my ideal version of the film, the opening titles would have been immediately followed by the end credits, leaving audiences to wonder what might have happened during all events of the movie.

[colinr0380]

SpoilerShow

I think the under-gloop sequence is a necessary one, both for developing the fate of the victims in the early section of the film and for being about the boundaries between life and death and the drawn out moment of slow-dawning, almost suicidal and fatalistic (or perhaps acceptance) realisation that a character has to that inevitably approaching change in physical state, which ties it in both with the seaside sequence and the "lush woodland-to-cut down area" environment for the rape-murder transfiguration (transubstantiation?) that takes place at the climax.

[M_Penalosa]

The female sexuality as alien/monster metaphor is about the oldest adolescent riff in the book. That Glazer would try to put the sheen of "impenetrability" on such an overworked theme made it even worse. Luckily for me, I started picturing Prince in the SJ role with his Dirty Mind album running over the soundtrack.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Luckily for me, I started picturing Prince in the SJ role with his Dirty Mind album running over the soundtrack.

I never thought I'd watch this again, but now I'm kinda tempted...

[flyonthewall2983]

SpoilerShow

I think the under-gloop sequence is a necessary one, both for developing the fate of the victims in the early section of the film and for being about the boundaries between life and death and the drawn out moment of slow-dawning, almost suicidal and fatalistic (or perhaps acceptance) realisation that a character has to that inevitably approaching change in physical state, which ties it in both with the seaside sequence and the "lush woodland-to-cut down area" environment for the rape-murder transfiguration (transubstantiation?) that takes place at the climax.

SpoilerShow

Having seen the entire film I agree with this completely. I'm probably not expressing this clearly enough, but the disappointment (which is slight, as that was an impressive and horrific visual anyway) came from it being gloop at all. What I interpreted it as the first time I saw the trailer, was that the victims were being erased, as if there was really nothing beneath. Looking back, something like that would have obviously served no purpose for the aliens, but I was and am still kind of attached to that visual idea.

[knives]

This must have been very fun to see in theaters. The film itself is a shameless ripoff of basically the whole of '70s British cinema, but at least that's a pretty versatile and rarely seen today source. Though I wish it kept a O, Lucky Man style musical number. That would have been interesting. Much of the film is beautiful through mis-en-scene and score effecting mood to a physical level which is quite good. Likewise on the complaining side of things Glaser has a fair amount of trouble sustaining that feeling across the film with the day light cinematography being noticeably poorer leaving a B movie Twilight Zone vibe which I guess is more a compliment than I was originally intending. Much of the vocal interaction is also very poor with the improvisation coming across very clearly and in a fashion that emptily feels like a film where the other affectations do not. Perhaps the movie would have been better completely eliding that for the silent story telling that the movie mostly ties itself to. The enigma is much more enjoyable and in fact better hints at the core of the film than any of the traditional elements call to.

For this I think the film recalls more Jerzy Skolimowski and perhaps more deliberately Polanski as another tale of an immigrant in Britain truly and utterly alone distanced from her people and the local population. The frightened way Johansson reacts to the women who drag her to the club is clearly reminiscent to the sexual fear of people that Polanski goes through in The Tenant and arguably that film's queer understanding of Jewish Identity is also duplicated by her violent alien. Though it is clear that so far removed from the Holocaust and with Israel as a country Glazer and Johansson can now be the aggressor where Polanski was the victim. Even still though the Jewish character has to portray herself as a victim, a woman about to get sexually penetrated, rather than be an outward aggressor. She never even really commits violence except to the already dead. This seems like an important contrast to something like Tarantino's fascism which never understood the psychology of the Jew. Glazer and Johansson for obvious reasons do. This empowerment of Jewery too must also be considered with the thought that Jews are never directly addressed with everyone being hidden though the emphasis on uncut cock might be considered text. Instead I'll admit to bringing in the biography of the artists into the film, but given things like her reaction to the deformed man (who gets that nice humanizing tough of the pinch) which has its duplication this year in the much more problematic The Immigrant it seems like strong evidence.

This is only a series of quickly jotted down thought and thus is not really up to snuff/ standard. For example while I have ideas relating to the film's questions of assimilation, its dangers, its attractiveness, and whether those elements are from the inside or out I'm not ready to throw them all out. What is clear to me for the film the Jew/alien stills sees herself as an alien in the world and must remain hidden like Johannson does in her truck and wig. Her idea of assimilation is a poor one though and makes it clear that she is still alien right down to her not quite there accent and inability to eat human food stuffs. The strongest thing I will admit that makes what I'm posting as questionable is that nothing beyond the biographical details necessitates her as Jewish since much of what the film is concerned with could be applied to many immigrant groups and in fact is probably more applicable to the growing Muslim communities than the small Jewish ones.

I came into this hoping that it wasn't as good as everyone has said. So with a strong dislike of Sexy Beast and Species referencing diss ready that tune has fortunately changed. I must admit that while it is overly repetitive and has a few other weaknesses, what it accomplishes comfortably steamrolls that.

[tenia]

Da fuck a Jewish thematic has to do with Under the skin ?

[colinr0380]

I thought that was a very interesting critique knives. A Jewish element in particular hadn't really occurred to me but I like your comparison to The Tenant and I'd certainly agree on the sense that the film has major themes of 'stranger in a strange land' and possibilities of emigration and assimilation within it. Particularly in the second half where there is that sense of escaping a previous cultural identity, perhaps dreaming of a completely fresh unsullied start, only to have hopes dashed by a feeling of displacement and constant awareness of a sense of 'otherness' in the new one. The old world, even if it was one trying to be left behind, is still contained within.

This is why I felt earlier that Under The Skin was an extremely well done 'enigmatic' film, up there with Kiyoshi Kurosawa's similarly masterfully encompassing films (Pulse in particular ends up being about ghostly immigration, 'ghetto' areas and issues of assimilation/displacement). It feels as if the film is allowing for that space to express an idea of the sense of being a minority groups within a dominant society (whether racial, religious, sexual, disability, class, or gender based), both apart from and part of the society.

All of this gets complicated in that ending too with the disturbing sense of (an unasked for) sacrifice leading to a disturbing kind of liberation. Very A Ma Soeur-like! (I'm currently, and this might be through re-watching La ciénaga last night, fascinated by the use of a kind of brutal, devastating contrivance to reach narrative closure but also to work as a kind of transcendent tying together and statment of themes)

[knives]

I definitely agree that the film more easily fits into broad ideas of assimilation. The Jewish connection is primarily due to the identities of Glazer, Johansson, and Polanski. Though like I started out I think once a specific identity is applied to her it's easy to see how little bits connect with that identity.

[Mr Sausage]

I always thought the film was structured around, and playing off of, two female archetypes: the black widow, who victimizes men and plays off of fears of female sexual power, and the sexual naif who's victimized by men in a world she doesn't understand and plays off of fears of male sexual power. By themselves, they're cliches, but pairing them like this is interesting. Don't know what to make of it at the moment, but it sure complicates the movie.

[colinr0380]

Perhaps even wider, there is that constant sense of enormous inescapable forces buffeting individuals around, forcing them to change and adapt, even if that means being destroyed and remade. There is sort of the human level of animalistic contact and conflict, culture and politics, then the extra-terrestrial one of humans being processed somehow and alien agendas, to the environmental one of even nature being deadly and all-encompassing. Every element in the world is both attractive and repulsive, often at the same time. Or the attraction reveals itself to be repulsive mid-way through a scene.

[mfunk9786]

After giving Inherent Vice another chance and walking away relatively pleased, I decided to finally rewatch this film, which despite really disliking it upon first viewing, has rattled around in my mind ever since, with my own hindsight crafting it into a tense masterwork that I just needed to give another chance. I'm disappointed to report that the film still just doesn't work for me - there are moments of real terror and beauty - the opening scene in which Johansson carelessly removes the clothing from a dead woman who looks a lot like her, the solemn *pop* scene (if you've seen it, you know what I'm describing), and the film's final moments among them. But on the whole, the film grabs me as dull and devoid of compelling narrative drive... a lot needs to be filled in around the edges, either by a prior knowledge of the book or by the viewer's own conjecture - which can be a great joy of seeing an art film like this, but when you're handed a character who's a blank slate and begins to make decisions that seem to entirely betray the characterization we've been given, that joy can't really penetrate the viewing experience the way it should. At least, it didn't for me here.

[colinr0380]

After spending a few minutes yesterday trying unsuccessfully to describe the meaning behind Channel 4's new idents that have been running since September to my bewildered father as seeming to be a kind of combination of Under The Skin and Powaqqatsi, with perhaps a dash of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which left my dad even more in the dark as to what all of those references were, unfortunately!), I was inspired to check up on the idents and was surprised to find out (courtesy of this Solute article on Glazer's ad and music video work) that these pieces actually were directed by Jonathan Glazer!

I'm still not entirely sure about the idents being a little too arty and esoteric for the simple purpose of introducing The Simpsons and Hollyoaks, but they're certainly striking!

[flyonthewall2983]

The last season of Hannibal took some cues from it. I remember Bryan Fuller tweeting an article about the disfigured man, and saying how much he loved it.

[moreorless]

I always thought the film was structured around, and playing off of, two female archetypes: the black widow, who victimizes men and plays off of fears of female sexual power, and the sexual naif who's victimized by men in a world she doesn't understand and plays off of fears of male sexual power. By themselves, they're cliches, but pairing them like this is interesting. Don't know what to make of it at the moment, but it sure complicates the movie.

A bit late in the reply but having watched it again a few weeks ago and just signed up..

In the first half of the film I personally felt the archetype the film was drawing on was less the femme fatal/black widow(although this is clearly present in the entrapment scenes especially) and more the serial killer/rapist given a switch of gender. The sense of impersonally and calculatingly targeting easy victims I think draws much more from the latter. It seems like an obvious counter to the "she was asking for it" rape defence to me showing its double standard in the male victims having sexual desire yet still being blameless in their fate.

I'd say as well it feels very much like a film who's style flows from its story rather than having it superimposed on it. Firstly showing us an alien viewpoint and then the humanising of that alien in a very slow subtle fashion.

I find personally the aspect of the film that's most enigmatic to be the way it uses its environments, moving between deliberately mundane human settlements and more awe inspiring natural ones. I mean on one level I spose it recreates the experience of visiting the area it takes place in but there seems to be an impact on the character as well. The first shifts towards humanity seem to be hinted at in the beach scene(even if there not acted on) and the scene in the mist is where a definite decision is made to leave the van then after the failed attempt as romance/sex we see the character taking refuge in the mossy woodland with that intercut image of the storm blown trees.

[colinr0380]

This leads me to say that I found this a very funny film! While it is obviously all played deadly serious I loved that the man hunting early section of the film is really just a sci-fi embellished version of a great Monty Python sketch! It even has a great slinky snake charmer musical score for those moments! (That amazing underwater scene certainly bears a debt to the work of Chris Cunningham, particularly flex) Or the way that when one of the men makes a comment that there is something wrong with Johansson's eye that she immediately enters a lock up garage to get the once over from her motorcyclist companion, as if she needed a tune up! And of course during the scene of Johansson being led around a supermarket, I was pleased that the national beverage, Irn-Bru, turned up on the shelves in the background!

This thread coming up again reminded me to do my periodic check of YouTube for the classic Irn Bru advert from the 1990s, and luckily it has finally appeared! (And yes it does taste as if you have taken a blow to the head!)

[DarkImbecile]

Studio Canal UK just posted a series of alternate posters; I like the third one (by Matthew Woodson)

[flyonthewall2983]

I read that a TV version is in the works

[Karamazov]

I read that a TV version is in the works

Feeling a bit skeptical if that'll actually work at all. At any rate, the experience one has got on theatre could hardly be reproduced at home if there's not a proper audio system, I guess?

[The Curious Sofa]

I read that a TV version is in the works

Feeling a bit skeptical if that'll actually work at all. At any rate, the experience one has got on theatre could hardly be reproduced at home if there's not a proper audio system, I guess?

It's not planned as an extension of the feature film but as a new adaptation of the Michel Faber novel the film is based on. If they follow the book more closely, a tv series would be a very different experience. The film stripped the novel down to its bare essentials, discarding most of its plot, instead honing in on its atmosphere of (literally) alienation.

[thirtyframesasecond]

I read that a TV version is in the works

Feeling a bit skeptical if that'll actually work at all. At any rate, the experience one has got on theatre could hardly be reproduced at home if there's not a proper audio system, I guess?

It's not planned as an extension of the feature film but as a new adaptation of the Michel Faber novel the film is based on. If they follow the book more closely, a tv series would be a very different experience. The film stripped the novel down to its bare essentials, discarding most of its plot, instead honing in on its atmosphere of (literally) alienation.

I agree with you - I think a series would really explore the important issues Faber addresses, so that sounds really promising. I was very ambivalent towards the film, which though stylish, didn't really add up to much IMO.

[mfunk9786]

I'll never forget walking out of the film in a daze (I still have mixed feelings about it, in the words of Roger Ebert on The Master, it's "fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air") and having LQ, who loves the source novel, explain that if only it had been a more direct adaptation, it might have been much more to my taste. Then she went on to describe the totally off-the-wall plot of the book beat-by-beat, and I was more convinced than ever that perhaps this entire intellectual property just wasn't for me.

[The Curious Sofa]

I'll never forget walking out of the film in a daze (I still have mixed feelings about it, in the words of Roger Ebert on The Master, it's "fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air") and having LQ, who loves the source novel, explain that if only it had been a more direct adaptation, it might have been much more to my taste. Then she went on to describe the totally off-the-wall plot of the book beat-by-beat, and I was more convinced than ever that perhaps this entire intellectual property just wasn't for me.

I could see how the plot sounds lurid and even silly when summed up in a few sentences but I found the novel thematically rich and profoundly moving. Orwell's Animal Farm comes the closest if I had to compare it to something, it's a fable which deals with an emphathetic disconnect most of us perform daily and don't like thinking too much about, yet it manages to do so without being didactic.

I love the movie of Under the Skin but it took me a couple of viewings because I had to get the book out of my mind. I suppose Kubrick's The Shining would be the closest comparison when it comes to translating a complex novel into a primarily audio visual experience. Glazer strips the book down even more than Kubrick did and I think that makes it a better adaptation, as the film completely becomes its own thing. Glazer's film still captures the desolate atmosphere of the novel though. I believe initially Faber was planning a more faithful adaptation but that would have required a far larger budget and eventually he went for an impressionist approach.

As it happens I'm just reading Michel Faber's other science fiction novel (he has written novels in several genres) The Book of Strange New Things. Amazon produced a pilot based on it called Oasis but never developed it into a series. I'll check it out when I've finished reading the book.

[Mr Sausage]

I thought the film was openly playing two female archetypes off each other: woman as man-eater, black widow, essence stealer, ect., and woman as sexual naif, vulnerable, easily victimized, an object of near constant violent desire. Despite involving an alien, the movie seems to be about what its like to live in a female skin, told through some of the most prevalent narratives attached to femininity.