Movie Review: Under the Skin

Under the Skin (2014 – US release)

R

4.5 Stars out of 5

Director/Writer                 Jonathan Glazer

Writer                                 Walter Campbell

    Michel Faber (novel’s author)

Cinematography              Daniel Landin

Music                                  Mica Levi

Scarlett Johansson          Woman

Jeremy McWilliams         Motorcyclist
Joe Szula                            First Victim
Kryštof Hádek                   Swimmer
Paul Brannigan                 Second Victim
Adam Pearson                  Disfigured Man
Michael Moreland           Highlands Man

 Under the Skin is not an easy movie to watch, and the reason is because it is so clever and so capably told that it is really two stories being told simultaneously. But it also is less a motion picture than a series of images told with motion. This “movie” can be thought of a series of images, each helping to tell the overall tale, but also able to stand alone to tell a single tale; a movie that could be thought of as iconic for its potential importance in film history that uses icons to tell its story.

The superficial story begins by borrowing from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a long view of a circle of light. The camera holds this image for an uncomfortable length of time. The viewer is essentially warned right at the beginning, this is not a standard science fiction story. The white light expands in time, gains color and perspective, and a “sense” of space or other-worldliness is created. We move to Earth where we see an individual (Jeremy McWilliams, a professional motorcyclist in real life) is riding his motorcycle at high speed towards a van. With never a word in the entire movie, we quickly learn of the motorcyclist’s energy and purposefulness. In this scene, he carries a seemingly unconscious woman from the roadside to the van. Within the van, we see only a nude woman (Scarlett Johansson) strip the clothing from the “unconscious” woman and don her clothing. There is a moment when the now stripped woman sheds a tear and her face looks remarkably like that of Johansson’s. The scene is done against a complete background of white; no other images but the two (one?) women exchanging clothing can be seen.

Thus, begins a series of events involving Johansson as she (now dressed in human clothing and as we will learn later, human skin) begins a series of abductions of human males. She starts to troll Glasgow Scotland for young, unattached men. Each of her victims acknowledges Johansson’s beauty and each is clearly interested in Johansson as a woman. In an early foreshadowing of other events to come, we see Johansson’s character respond as a young flattered woman might respond to compliments. But keep in mind, all the compliments are to her physical beauty. As she captures her victims with her allure, she takes them to a run-down building, where all the physical signs are there to warn the suitors off. They are not warned though, their passions and hopes run too high, and they follow Johansson into the building and to their doom. Their final moments are like the scene wherein Johansson took her doppelganger’s clothing; though in these scenes, rather than framed in white, each of the young men’s final moments are framed in black. We watch Johansson walk across a pitch black floor as she slowly disrobes; her victims do the same as far as the disrobing goes. But unlike Johansson, each male slowly and seemingly in complete ignorance of their situation, slowly sinks into the floor. Beneath the floor we learn their fate as they finally become aware of their danger, and in time pass into little more than their skin – costumes perhaps for future alien visitors.

The science fiction angle of this movie is far and away the lesser part. Just as this movie’s science fiction tale of alien invasion of Earth is superficial, so the deeper aspects of this story are focused on the superficial aspects of human life. Johansson is simply to her human male counterparts a thing, one draped in a lovely costume of skin. She might as well be alien wearing a Scarlett Johansson suit; they aren’t looking past the surface. Her “humanness” is not an issue to them in their pursuit of her. Or so the first part of the movie would lead a viewer to believe. As Johansson’s character carries out her duties of abduction, it becomes slowly clear that she is beginning to find fault in her situation. When she first begins her abductions, we see her casually kill a swimmer that had vainly tried to save a husband and wife from drowning, we see her take him as lightly as a hunter would his elk, and we watch her uncaringly leave that lost couple’s toddler alone by the sea. She is an alien, and these creatures mean nothing to her. She reacts with the same indifference to the child as to the mother or the father – just bags of skin waiting to be harvested. And yet, in time, and the movie takes pains to illustrate the time, she starts to sense a something in her prey that affects her. At one point, she is helped to her feet by passing strangers and at multiple points in the movie, there are humans inquiring as to her state – is she okay? She starts to wonder herself: is she okay? After abducting one last victim, a poor disfigured soul, she stops to stare at a mirror. In my opinion, this moment in front of the mirror is the highlight of the film. Who is she; what is she doing, what lies beneath her surface – that the mirror is dirty and difficult to view a reflection in, is precisely the point.

That moment in front of the mirror is a turning point in the science fiction story and in the deeper story. Johansson’s character now leaves her life of abduction, flees into the Highlands of north Scotland, and indeed flees whatever she once was beneath her surface. That she was not repulsed by the disfigured man was an early mark of her “alikeness”, her “otherness is starting fade; and what an ironic mark it is. She reacts with more human compassion to the disfigured man by not reacting to his disfigurement than likely almost anyone in that man’s history. It wasn’t her freeing him that was noteworthy; it was her acknowledgement of his humanness, not his otherness in how she spoke to him when they first met. This happens again in the Highlands. She meets a man at a bus stop who is apparently only concerned about her needs, and not his. As they grow closer (from his point of view) they attempt to make love but must stop as she realizes, she cannot physically do this act. She has “gone native” in the science fiction narrative of this movie, but she cannot go so far as to truly become and function as a human. She runs again, this time from her new situation. She runs into the forest where she meets an all too common human – one that takes. Now we see an all too common emotion human emotion on her face, fear.

We learn what her physical nature is; an inky black form within the human form. Her body is a figure that is stripped bare of clothing, of hair, of almost all human facial expression. And in yet in an iconic scene where the camera catches her looking down at the Johansson face, now removed from her own face, there are things that are there to see. There is a kind of compassion as she stares down at the suit she has been wearing, the former human Johansson person now reduced to a bag of skin. This skin still seems human, still seems to emote, to feel something as it stares back at the alien that once wore her. The film ends with a camera pan from a smoky black fire to a pure white snow fall. Fade to white. Thus ends the science fiction tale.

This movie has haunted me to the point where I will now read the book to see if I can get another perspective on the story. The movie though is a profound one of surfaces, of seeing past surfaces, of what is human and what is alien. It could be criticized as being too artsy: there is a near constant stream of music that is intended presumably to give the listener a sense of the alien; there is a frequent use of editing that forces the viewer to make quick, then slow leaps through time and movie sequence, and there is an opening and closing sequence that employ extended times for the scene in question – all of these techniques disrupt the viewer from their normal viewing mode, that disrupts their complacency as viewers. This movie speaks eloquently of superficiality, of humanness, of otherness. How do we as humans view members of the other gender, how do we view disfigurement, do we treat one another as more than a bag of skin in our interactions? The first part of the movie would say no, but the second part of the movie would say there is room for hope. That some people would give up their life to save a dog, their wife, or would offer help to a stranger in need, even an alien. Yes, this movie is artsy in tone, but it is very human in content. The tone may be too much for most people (it failed at the box office), but its content, if you take the time and have the interest, is a message of hope.