Under The Skin (15.)
Directed by Jonathan Glazer.
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Krystof Hadek, Adam Pearson, Jeremy McWilliams, Steve Keys. 108 mins.
The sex-crazed-alien-in-female-form-who-lands-on-earth genre has a less than illustrious history. From Lifeforce to Species to various Hentai efforts featuring a surfeit of tentacles, they are never quite as much sordid fun as you’d expect. Under the Skin, which has Scarlett Johansson travelling around Glasgow in a white van luring unattached men to a fate worse than death, isn’t much of a sordid romp either. It is though a mesmerising, singular experience, a piece of pure cinema so audacious and perfectly realised that it makes most other films released in this or any other years look hopelessly primitive. So, swings and roundabouts, isn’t it?
Jonathan Glazer is an ad director and video promo maker (most famous for the Guinness surfer ad: “tick follows tock follow tick” etc.) whose two full length feature films, Sexy Beast and Birth, displayed enormous technical skill but didn’t quite have the artistry to match. They both suggested a talent that could be going somewhere but never hinted at a destination like this.
In fact, it is hard to believe that this is by the same director as Sexy Beast. That was propelled by a Pinter inspired spew of language: this is an almost non-verbal experience. There is no dialogue for the first fifteen minutes and the small amount that follows is little more than another part of the movie’s impressive sound design and soundtrack. The meaning and the narrative is contained almost entirely in what you see rather than what they say, and what amazing things you see.
Like The Man Who Fell To Earth, it tries to show our world through alien eyes. At times the film resembles the Star Gate sequences in 2001 relocated to Govan; at others it has the naturalistic otherness of Lynne Ramsey, particularly Morvern Callar. Everyday normality but not as we know it.
Other than skip a few circuits around the gym to give herself a more naturally curvy figure and come up with an immaculate posh English accent Scarlett Johansson really isn’t called on to do much, yet she’s probably never been better.
Previously Glazer has tended to crib from Kubrick and there are little nods here (alongside the 2001 references, the amazing soundtrack seems to have been inspired by the Full Metal Jacket score), but for the most part he is making a film style all his own. Structure is important but the mark of a gifted author is knowing where to put words in a sentence, and for a filmmaker it is knowing where to put the camera. The camera placement in Under the Skin is immaculate; every inch of the frame has energy and life. There isn’t a dull or ordinary shot in the film.
It is a sad irony that audiences and reviewers are often scornful of actual cinema; resentful of the idea that the flicks might be getting ideas above its station. Because of its unconventional ways it will be labelled “challenging” or criticised for being oblique yet really there isn’t anything difficult about it. Under the Skin isn’t challenging; it is a straightforward opportunity to be a rather awed at the possibilities of what movies can be.
Directed by Jonathan Glazer.
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Krystof Hadek, Adam Pearson, Jeremy McWilliams, Steve Keys. 108 mins.
The sex-crazed-alien-in-female-form-who-lands-on-earth genre has a less than illustrious history. From Lifeforce to Species to various Hentai efforts featuring a surfeit of tentacles, they are never quite as much sordid fun as you’d expect. Under the Skin, which has Scarlett Johansson travelling around Glasgow in a white van luring unattached men to a fate worse than death, isn’t much of a sordid romp either. It is though a mesmerising, singular experience, a piece of pure cinema so audacious and perfectly realised that it makes most other films released in this or any other years look hopelessly primitive. So, swings and roundabouts, isn’t it?
Jonathan Glazer is an ad director and video promo maker (most famous for the Guinness surfer ad: “tick follows tock follow tick” etc.) whose two full length feature films, Sexy Beast and Birth, displayed enormous technical skill but didn’t quite have the artistry to match. They both suggested a talent that could be going somewhere but never hinted at a destination like this.
In fact, it is hard to believe that this is by the same director as Sexy Beast. That was propelled by a Pinter inspired spew of language: this is an almost non-verbal experience. There is no dialogue for the first fifteen minutes and the small amount that follows is little more than another part of the movie’s impressive sound design and soundtrack. The meaning and the narrative is contained almost entirely in what you see rather than what they say, and what amazing things you see.
Like The Man Who Fell To Earth, it tries to show our world through alien eyes. At times the film resembles the Star Gate sequences in 2001 relocated to Govan; at others it has the naturalistic otherness of Lynne Ramsey, particularly Morvern Callar. Everyday normality but not as we know it.
Other than skip a few circuits around the gym to give herself a more naturally curvy figure and come up with an immaculate posh English accent Scarlett Johansson really isn’t called on to do much, yet she’s probably never been better.
Previously Glazer has tended to crib from Kubrick and there are little nods here (alongside the 2001 references, the amazing soundtrack seems to have been inspired by the Full Metal Jacket score), but for the most part he is making a film style all his own. Structure is important but the mark of a gifted author is knowing where to put words in a sentence, and for a filmmaker it is knowing where to put the camera. The camera placement in Under the Skin is immaculate; every inch of the frame has energy and life. There isn’t a dull or ordinary shot in the film.
It is a sad irony that audiences and reviewers are often scornful of actual cinema; resentful of the idea that the flicks might be getting ideas above its station. Because of its unconventional ways it will be labelled “challenging” or criticised for being oblique yet really there isn’t anything difficult about it. Under the Skin isn’t challenging; it is a straightforward opportunity to be a rather awed at the possibilities of what movies can be.
