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.

 

Movie Review: Lucy

Lucy (2014)

Two and half Stars out of Five

R

Lucy: Scarlett Johansson

Professor Norman: Morgan Freeman

Mr. Chang: Min-Sik Choi

Pierre Del Rio: Amr Waked

Director/Writer: Luc Besson

Lucy is a disappointing amalgam of film genre: science fiction, comedy, kung-fu, mobster, revenge, and even philosophical/science. It will come as little surprise that trying to achieve so much, the movie largely fails to deliver on any of the various channels. The movie does not even really provide much in the way of eye candy with respect to the various special effects either. This movie can easily be skipped, but if you really want to know what it is about, read on.

The film begins with a scene from early in the history of the hominids, presumably Lucy herself. She sits in a stream and while looking fearfully about drinks from it. Moving forward in time, we meet a modern Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) being accosted by her disreputable boyfriend outside a swanky Taipei hotel. Against her better wishes, at the behest of her boyfriend she enters the hotel to deliver a package to a Mr. Chang (Mik-Sik Choi). He turns out to be a gangster and drug king pin. Lucy quickly finds herself a drug-mule for Mr. Chang. However, the drug bag sewn into abdomen ruptures, and like every B sci-fi movie from the 50’s, rather than dying from the effects of the drug, she becomes enhanced. Wielding her new, God-like powers she begins a campaign of revenge aimed at Mr. Chang. Along the way, she hooks up with Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman). While she was enjoying Taiwan, he had been lecturing an adoring audience of how little humans used their minds, and if only they could use more, life would be so sweet. Lucy having now proven his thesis wants to explain to him all she now knows. Meanwhile, having disrupted his drug empire, Mr. Chang wants to pay her back. And it is just so hard to predict what will happen in Paris when they all get there: guns, explosions, cars driving the wrong way, and creepy visual effects for the new Miss Lucy.

To its credit, the movie has two fine scenes with Ms. Johansson showing her skills as an actor, and also indicating what this movie might have been had M. Besson stuck to a single movie genre. In the first, as Lucy realizes the danger she is in with Mr. Chang, she acts out just how pitiful a situation she quickly realizes she has fallen into. Johansson displays a believable role as a helpless young woman, one that seems likely to die very soon. Later after having escaped and as she perceives her changing status from that as a young woman into something far different, she makes a tearful call to her mother. Using the opportunity that science fiction offers her in this situation she tells her mom she remembers everything: from being held and nursed by her mother to a lifetime’s thousands of kisses from her mom. It was moving and compassionate, and could only happen in the otherwise unbelievable situation the fantasy elements of this story permit her character to experience.

Luc Besson has made a number of movies that span a variety of genre. He has been perhaps the most commercially successful with his Taken and Transporter franchises: kinetic, fight scene/car chase drivel that make large amounts of money and have little to say beyond the idea of righteous revenge. Due to his earlier movies such as Subway, The Big Blue, or even Nikita, he has been classed as a member of the “Cinema du Look”, a film school that favors style over substance. One could easily perceive such influences within Lucy.  During the opening scenes of Lucy being cornered by her boyfriend and then by Mr. Chang, wildlife scenes of a gazelle being hunted by a cheetah are intercut with the human scenes of her deteriorating situation with Mr. Chang. Is this a stylistic touch or an attempt at humor; it seems more the latter to me than the former. And that is the fundamental problem with the movie. Besson’s intent with the movie is so watered down by the various genre shifts and/or stylistic flourishes; the movie just degenerates to the level of the pointless car chase that occurs near the end of the movie. What does the car chase mean; oh yeah, just like the movie: nothing.

Had Besson really wanted to explore what it is that makes Man the creature he is; to explore the limits and opportunities of the mind, he had the framework of a movie that could have made a film worth experiencing. The concept of how much of the human mind is actually used and what might happen to the human that had her mind expanded, what happens to her humanness is a subject worth exploring. But explore it sans gangsters with machine guns, TOW anti-tank weapons and pseudo-science lectures. Lucy is not that movie and should be skipped by anyone not solely interested in car chases that end with police cars flying through the air.