Sci-fi that is pretentiously weird, but at least it gives you some interesting things to look at. Under the Skin is one of the more bizarre examples of experimental cinema in recent years. Scarlett Johansson, in it just to prove she can do something really different, plays an alien who seduces zero personality males of Glasgow, Scotland, by getting them to jump into her van and go to her pad for sex. But she’s really just luring them into a lair, one of pitch black minimalism, where the males are immediately hypnotized as they slink into a pool where their organs are harvested – for something. British Director Jonathan Glazer (whose terrifically strange films “Sexy Beast” and “Birth” are conventional in comparison) has said in interviews the humans are harvested, in this plot, to feed the alien race back on their home planet. Hmm, I appreciated the far-out imagery, but the film is plodding with ideas few and far-between.
Johansson, as the alien, makes the kind of slutty and demure come-ons to get these men to board the van – and it’s obvious something’s a little off with this woman, these guys must be thinking, but she seems easy. The whole scenario is repetitive, and the only meager pleasure, is for the film to show us a little more each time of what happens to these guys at the lair. They lose consciousness, then they lose everything.
When Johansson picks up a shy man with facial disfigurement (non-actor Adam Pearson who has neurofibromatosis), he only wants a lift to the supermarket. This is the one time Johansson might feel he doesn’t deserve this fate – and helps him to escape. Later, resigned with her quest, she goes home with an odd-guy who watches dumb comedy TV but is kind enough to set up a bedroom heater for her. She has sex with him that’s out of curiosity of the soul, and not out of her own emotional pleasure. Lying back while he’s on top, she is indifferent and unresponsive. She’s definitely not an alien you will see riding on top.
Sometimes you watch a fiction film for its documentary aspects, and I did enjoy seeing the eerie surroundings of Scotland as this alien drives around looking for prey. Sometimes it is bleak. But it’s kind of like the notorious “The Brown Bunny,” that endless art film fiasco where you spent two hours watching petty sights through a van windshield while the character figures out the meaning of life. Granted, there are more inventive visuals here (the opening of a planetary eclipse is Kubrickian), but you put your own mind and soul through a lot of muck during “Skin” to get to the parts you appreciate.
Glazer is striving for high art, driven to do something like the great “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” but it’s so damn repetitive, and with a lot less substance and significance. As for Johansson, she proves she can play cold and emotionless, and the only warmth she gives to her audience is when she shows her entire body. The film, and it’s forsaken forest ending where a human is far more atrocious in behavior, creeps you out more than arouses excitement. But that’s the film’s intent anyway. I just wish there was more to it.
Based upon the 2000 novel by Michel Faber.
107 Minutes. Rated R.
CEREBRAL SCI-FI / WEIRDNESS / FRIDAY AFTER DARK
Film Cousins: “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976); “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978); “The Brother from Another Planet” (1984); “The Brown Bunny” (2003).
It’s one of the biggest powerhouse performances in the history of cinema, Ben Kingsley in Jonathan Glazer’s debut <em>Sexy Beast</em>. As Don Logan, he is a gangster who travels from London to the outskirts of Spain to cajole one of his old pros out of retirement to pull of a bank safe deposit box robbery. The retired man is bloated, out of shape, baked like a lounging lizard, and afraid of mobster work. Logan alternates between barking at him, uses a mastery of passive aggressiveness, bares fake empathy only to trap in deception, and hangs over some knowledge of past sexual transgressions he had with neighbor Jackie. Logan even gets himself into deliberate trouble at the airport – Why? – perhaps just to fuel his own anger, or just bemuse himself with how much manipulative psychological power he has over others. Nobody has ever done such a smashing job with smiting others with the power of words, exception to Hannibal Lechter.
Kingsley is doing such tremendous devil’s work that it was only this last viewing that I realized how good Ray Winstone is as Gal, the retiree who is not only afraid but is also protective of his ex-porn star wife Deedee (Amanda Redman). Late in the picture, Gal has to explain to mastermind boss Teddy Bass (Ian McShane, doing his most vicious cinematic presence of his career) the specifics of his last conversation with Don Logan. And what we realize is, Winstone and his character of Gal himself, are doing the best acting of his life in order to save face and cover a lie.
And what about lies? The intensity of the Don Logan / Gal encounters are so loaded with trouble, that no matter what, it appears as if Gal is going to have to spend the remainder of his life covering up a lie. Gal is so knees deep that it would have been a lot easier had a boulder smashed up him in the opening moments of the film.
The language of <em>Sexy Beast</em> is so empowered and visceral and lewd and scathing – as well as, it’s gotta-be-true-to-life – that it makes you realize how manufactured other gangster movies are in comparison.
That’s a summit achievement, simply its’ use of words. So strong, that it made me not realize for years how incisive, eerie, wicked and penetrative Glazer’s skills are in photographing and editing this Molotov cocktail. What do I mean by penetrative? Take a look at the propulsive editing and shooting style of the final break-in, the cross-cutting between blows in the past and the power drills breaking into a water under a pool of water – there is also extreme excitement in wondering, if this was real life, wouldn’t this whole break-in be so weird yet magnificent and majestic?
What gave me more of a tingle? At the end, we see that Gal’s lies have been eaten through. Gal’s façade has crumbled and he is now hanging on a wing and a prayer, hoping that he has not pissed off the crimelords, his Gods that he is beholden to, and that he can have one last gimme.
Some of the far-out imagery are too obviously done with trick-shot effects, and some of the roaming around the city footage is too redundant, and some of the alien lair footage are too obviously done on an avante-garde soundstage. Yet <em>Under the Skin</em> creates a spell that is singular and provocative.
Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who seduces zero-personality males in Glasgow, Scotland, by getting them to jump into her van and go to her pad for sex. But she’s really just luring them into a lair, one of pitch black minimalism, where the males are immediately hypnotized as they slink into a pool where their organs are harvested – for <em>something</em>. British director Jonathan Glazer (whose terrifically strange films “Sexy Beast” and “Birth” are conventional in comparison) said in interviews the humans are indeed harvested to feed the alien race back on their home planet.
What breaks up the monotony of the film is that the cold and pragmatic Johansson alien becomes curious as to what is human emotion, and becomes interested as to what is behind human kindness. Perhaps earthlings have more depth than beings from her own alien planet, and mentally, Johansson’s alien wants to understand it. Eventually, a shy man who is facially disfigured with neurofibromatosis out of the realm of curious compassion is released by her – only for a comrade male alien on a motorbike to go re-capture him anyway.
It takes a daring acting talent, one that Johansson surprisingly possesses, to play an affectless creature who is curious enough to want to experiment with feigning emotions that belong to specifically to another species – that species is Us.
The godforsaken forest ending where one human’s behavior is far more atrocious than our lead alien, is a climax that creeps you out and submits you to imagery that is earthly, ethereal and nihilistic all in one. Glazer created something too glacier cold in his pacing and atmosphere too much of the time to the point that I can’t say after multiple viewings that I have ever been totally in love with it, but it’s easy to say otherwise that I’ve definitely felt something stimulating and disturbing from <em>Under the Skin</em>. Intellectually, it stirs in my brain frequently.
