So many of the films that I really enjoy win me over with their dialogue. Whether it’s Quentin Tarantino’s expletive-laden, pop-culture referencing monologues (or Kevin Smith’s for that matter), or Joss Whedon’s trademark quippy banter, or the rat-a-tat back-and-forth of films written by Aaron Sorkin, so much of what draws me into a movie is how the characters speak. As much as film is a visual medium (and it’s worth noting that Sorkin and Whedon rose to prominence on television, which, to overgeneralize once more, is more of a writer’s medium), it’s also been the home of reams of classic dialogue which drives home story, character, or theme using the spoken word.
That’s why what stands out in Under the Skin, what makes it feel like such an ambitious and even avant garde film is how nigh-wordless it is. There is a bit of dialogue here and there: exchanges between the film’s protagonist and her unsuspecting victims, words offered from (almost exclusively male) strangers now and then, and sounds from television shows or ambient noise. But for most of the film’s running time, there is nothing said.
That puts pressure on director Jonathan Glazer to tell the film’s story in its visuals. Under the Skin traffics in the same other-worldly, deliberately explored images as 2001: A Space Odyssey. Glazer isn’t afraid to let the camera linger, whether it’s on the large zoom that makes up the first image in the film, or long takes that let these scenes breathe. There is a haunting serenity to this film, a sense that everything is calm but nothing is right, and the film’s aesthetic makes that come true.
The film is shot in a way that makes scenes like the protagonist stalking through a club or inveigling random strangers feel real, almost documentary, but that makes the scenes where these people are enveloped to their demise seem like some preternaturally clean and impossible space. It’s in that space where the film is at its most impressionistic and visually interesting, featuring a heartbreaking moment between two victims who find brief comfort in a pitch-black sea, before one of them is seamlessly gutted, his skin left to float beautifully in that abyss. The production design is impeccable, contrasting the difference between these two realms perfectly, and helping to convey the movie’s plot and ideas and emotion without ever having anyone explain them.
But even more of that pressure, and more of that success, falls on the shoulders of Scarlett Johansson. She, more than anything else in the movie, is called upon to tell its story, to communicate the feelings of her character who drives the piece, to show alternatively a practiced, almost scientific charm and an alien, unknowing curiosity and naiveté.
Johansson drifts effortlessly between the two. In the film’s early portions, she presents the perfect detachment, the sense of something conserving energy, not needing to present the social cues that human beings do, but just as quickly able to turn on those elements necessary to seem friendly, inviting, and kind.
But the true virtuosity of Johansson’s performance emerges after this dichotomy between motiveless creature and context-dependent venus flytrap is established, and the protagonist begins to discovery a glimpse of something approaching humanity, something that causes her to turn away from her programming. It’s an old cliché – the character who looks at themselves in the mirror and has a change of heart, but the understated nature of the way the film presents the story, and Johansson’s own subtle but powerful performance, makes the moment where she releases a disfigured man she’d previously lured and heads off on her own, a meaningful one.
It’s then that the protagonist begins to explore, with a childlike fear combined with curiosity, what our culture and society has to offer. She doesn’t speak, because she has no programming for these situations apart from the trap she was seemingly built for. That leaves Johansson expressing things like the bitter taste of chocolate cake, the quiet estimation and examination of her own body – what it has and lacks, and the shock of an assault, with only her expression, her body language, and her demeanor through each of these trials and discoveries.
The audience too, is offered no exposition, no bog-standard explanation of where the protagonist came from, who the men who seem to direct and follow her on motorcycles are, or that she is slowly discovering what it is to be a woman in our society. Glazer makes himself clear, but largely lets the audience fend for itself when it comes to anything but broad strokes. There are no details here, and none needed. It’s a choice that makes the film initially mystifying, in a way that can confuse and even unnerve the viewer, but that increases the power of the film, making the audience as unsure and tentative about what’s to come as the film’s protagonist is.
That protagonist endures a great deal over the course of the film. There’s commentary there, on how men treat women, by showing a woman who is a literal object, a tool programmed by (what at least appear to be) men to serve their purpose. There’s thematic resonance in that she is designed as a trap, as something to play on atavistic impulses to bring victims to be harvested for her programmers’ unstated purposes. But there’s also commentary in how she is treated when she slowly realizes that she is more than that, the way she is a stranger to the men (and again, it’s almost exclusively men), and is, despite her inability to speak, coddled, protected, taken in, made the object of sexual desire, and also of sexual assault.
It is, in the strangest sort of way, a deconstruction of The Little Mermaid, that doesn’t tip its hand thanks to the almost removed, judgmentless nature of Glazer’s camera, but which still speaks volumes thanks to the events that are presented, the scenes that show how this total innocent, who is unfamiliar with our culture, with much of anything about how men and women are supposed to interact, is treated despite, or perhaps because, of her almost total inability to have any say in it.
For so much depth, so much truth, to come through in a film where almost nothing is said is an achievement. Under the Skin is a film that catches you off guard, leaves you guessing, marveling at the images Glazer and Director of Photography Daniel Landin paint on the screen while you try to unravel what exactly you’re seeing. But when the pieces fall into place, buoyed by an incredible performance from Scarlett Johansson, so much is conveyed, so much is understood, that it’s amazing how little it takes to say it.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-11-07T18:54:47Z
So many of the films that I really enjoy win me over with their dialogue. Whether it’s Quentin Tarantino’s expletive-laden, pop-culture referencing monologues (or Kevin Smith’s for that matter), or Joss Whedon’s trademark quippy banter, or the rat-a-tat back-and-forth of films written by Aaron Sorkin, so much of what draws me into a movie is how the characters speak. As much as film is a visual medium (and it’s worth noting that Sorkin and Whedon rose to prominence on television, which, to overgeneralize once more, is more of a writer’s medium), it’s also been the home of reams of classic dialogue which drives home story, character, or theme using the spoken word.
That’s why what stands out in Under the Skin, what makes it feel like such an ambitious and even avant garde film is how nigh-wordless it is. There is a bit of dialogue here and there: exchanges between the film’s protagonist and her unsuspecting victims, words offered from (almost exclusively male) strangers now and then, and sounds from television shows or ambient noise. But for most of the film’s running time, there is nothing said.
That puts pressure on director Jonathan Glazer to tell the film’s story in its visuals. Under the Skin traffics in the same other-worldly, deliberately explored images as 2001: A Space Odyssey. Glazer isn’t afraid to let the camera linger, whether it’s on the large zoom that makes up the first image in the film, or long takes that let these scenes breathe. There is a haunting serenity to this film, a sense that everything is calm but nothing is right, and the film’s aesthetic makes that come true.
The film is shot in a way that makes scenes like the protagonist stalking through a club or inveigling random strangers feel real, almost documentary, but that makes the scenes where these people are enveloped to their demise seem like some preternaturally clean and impossible space. It’s in that space where the film is at its most impressionistic and visually interesting, featuring a heartbreaking moment between two victims who find brief comfort in a pitch-black sea, before one of them is seamlessly gutted, his skin left to float beautifully in that abyss. The production design is impeccable, contrasting the difference between these two realms perfectly, and helping to convey the movie’s plot and ideas and emotion without ever having anyone explain them.
But even more of that pressure, and more of that success, falls on the shoulders of Scarlett Johansson. She, more than anything else in the movie, is called upon to tell its story, to communicate the feelings of her character who drives the piece, to show alternatively a practiced, almost scientific charm and an alien, unknowing curiosity and naiveté.
Johansson drifts effortlessly between the two. In the film’s early portions, she presents the perfect detachment, the sense of something conserving energy, not needing to present the social cues that human beings do, but just as quickly able to turn on those elements necessary to seem friendly, inviting, and kind.
But the true virtuosity of Johansson’s performance emerges after this dichotomy between motiveless creature and context-dependent venus flytrap is established, and the protagonist begins to discovery a glimpse of something approaching humanity, something that causes her to turn away from her programming. It’s an old cliché – the character who looks at themselves in the mirror and has a change of heart, but the understated nature of the way the film presents the story, and Johansson’s own subtle but powerful performance, makes the moment where she releases a disfigured man she’d previously lured and heads off on her own, a meaningful one.
It’s then that the protagonist begins to explore, with a childlike fear combined with curiosity, what our culture and society has to offer. She doesn’t speak, because she has no programming for these situations apart from the trap she was seemingly built for. That leaves Johansson expressing things like the bitter taste of chocolate cake, the quiet estimation and examination of her own body – what it has and lacks, and the shock of an assault, with only her expression, her body language, and her demeanor through each of these trials and discoveries.
The audience too, is offered no exposition, no bog-standard explanation of where the protagonist came from, who the men who seem to direct and follow her on motorcycles are, or that she is slowly discovering what it is to be a woman in our society. Glazer makes himself clear, but largely lets the audience fend for itself when it comes to anything but broad strokes. There are no details here, and none needed. It’s a choice that makes the film initially mystifying, in a way that can confuse and even unnerve the viewer, but that increases the power of the film, making the audience as unsure and tentative about what’s to come as the film’s protagonist is.
That protagonist endures a great deal over the course of the film. There’s commentary there, on how men treat women, by showing a woman who is a literal object, a tool programmed by (what at least appear to be) men to serve their purpose. There’s thematic resonance in that she is designed as a trap, as something to play on atavistic impulses to bring victims to be harvested for her programmers’ unstated purposes. But there’s also commentary in how she is treated when she slowly realizes that she is more than that, the way she is a stranger to the men (and again, it’s almost exclusively men), and is, despite her inability to speak, coddled, protected, taken in, made the object of sexual desire, and also of sexual assault.
It is, in the strangest sort of way, a deconstruction of The Little Mermaid, that doesn’t tip its hand thanks to the almost removed, judgmentless nature of Glazer’s camera, but which still speaks volumes thanks to the events that are presented, the scenes that show how this total innocent, who is unfamiliar with our culture, with much of anything about how men and women are supposed to interact, is treated despite, or perhaps because, of her almost total inability to have any say in it.
For so much depth, so much truth, to come through in a film where almost nothing is said is an achievement. Under the Skin is a film that catches you off guard, leaves you guessing, marveling at the images Glazer and Director of Photography Daniel Landin paint on the screen while you try to unravel what exactly you’re seeing. But when the pieces fall into place, buoyed by an incredible performance from Scarlett Johansson, so much is conveyed, so much is understood, that it’s amazing how little it takes to say it.