This is such a lovely post. Spot on.
-xtien
“Hill Walkers Are Welcome.”
Agreed. The movie gives you no reason to think SarJo is an ET and not a robot or even an angel or demon. It’s a sensual movie, not a sensical one.
You know where else hill walkers are welcome?
“Ooh! And sauna!”
this is just the kind of thoughtfulness that i’d expect from qt3 boards, but you’ll never melt my heart
i’m perfectly happy with my interpretation of the movie, but the reality being that it’s clearly based in someone else’s fiction throws a small damper on whatever escape i found. i really enjoyed the brief time i had to think on it before going online to do the regular digging, though, so you’re right-- there’s always that
I have not read any post in this forum for fear of the movie being spoiled. Any ‘legal’ way I can see this Under the Skin sooner than later?
Not that I’ve looked, but there don’t even appear to be any illegal ways to watch this yet. Still bummed it hasn’t played anywhere around me.
You can preorder Under the Skin on Amazon for a July release. Link gives QT3 a couple cents if you buy.
So I saw this and was underwhelmed. I’d have liked a tad more story. I get that it’s an art film, but it’s missing something. There is no scene or moment that, in my opinion, ties everything together. In other words, what’s the point, why am I watching this? I think even Upstream Color was more generous with the story AND looked better in terms of visuals. My favorite part of Under the Skin was the ‘capture’ scenes, if the entire movie was filmed in that style I think it would have been a better film. As it is, part of the movie is visually distinctive, the other parts are drab.
I really do think that this may be one of those movies that can only be fully appreciated in the theater. The very first sequence of the movie, when you’re staring at the small, wavering light in the vast darkness of the theater while the unsettling, disorienting and somewhat alien music assaults you, after a while it starts to fuck with your eyes and then your brain and you realize that this is not a movie that you will passively watch but rather an experience. That scene pulls you in through the screen – Your experience is entwined with the aliens and suddenly you’re complicit.
Sitting in a theater, surround by darkness, there are no distractions from the film’s measured pace. I can imagine, if I had watched this at home, my mind would have wandered during the slower scenes, my eyes distracted away from the screen to something else in the room. I might have been tempted to pause the movie and get something to eat or to see what my dogs are barking at. In the theater there was nowhere to go, nothing to draw the eye so from that opening scene to the last, you’re seeing the world through the eyes of this alien intelligence.
Excellent post, Rightbug. I totally agree and that was one of the things I said at the beginning of our podcast on the movie. You think initially that this is just a small independent movie, so waiting to rent it is no big deal. But the experience of seeing this movie in a theater is singular. The way the music and sound design surround you, there in the dark…so important to getting what Jonathan Glazer is trying to do. I will certainly own a copy of the movie, eventually, as I’ll want to revisit it, but I am so happy I saw it for the first couple of times in a theater.
Well put.
-xtien
Second all that, it’s a moviegoer’s movie, I think it’s deliberately designed solely with being seen in a movie theater in mind, I don’t think there’s been any concern given at all to how it might work at home.
In the other direction, I remember when I first saw that Bruce Willis film about the asteroid coming to hit the earth. When I saw it in the movie theatre it was just awful. So much fast cutting, it was just really confusing and disorienting. But on a smaller screen at home, it just seemed like a normal film, easy to follow.
This film is slow and absorbing, and it has to be the only thing you’re focussing on, for it to work - but if those conditions are met, it really works well and gives a unique experience.
Did you guys say/think on the podcast that the first body was also Scarlett Johansson (in the part where you’re talking about some other movie with an alien that cries)? Because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. I think the boss just grabbed that woman for her clothes.
Here is a screen of the girl in question. 
(and I totally could’ve heard them wrong on the podcast)
Ah, great catch, Wholly! If I recall correctly, I wasn’t sure whether it was supposed to be her, and one of those other two jokers told me they thought it was. But it seems the implication is that the Scarlett Johansson suit is entirely an alien creation. To me, one of the strengths of the movie is that we don’t get details of what they want, why they’re doing it, or even how they’re doing it.
-Tom
By the way, something else we wondered about on the podcast and found out later: Adam Pearson, the actor playing the disfigured victim, isn’t an actor in make-up. He’s someone who suffers from neurofibromatosis who works in television production and casting. He responded to a casting call for the movie and got the role. Here’s an interview with him.
-Tom
Anyway, I wish I could’ve seen this in theaters, but it never showed anywhere close to me that I could find. Watching it at home would normally still be a pretty similar experience, my roommate has a big projector set up in the basement, so it can be a pretty good approximation of a pitch black theatrical setup, except I stopped a few times in the beginning of the film to double check all the audio settings before deciding that the mix was supposed to be as confusing as it was (like when you can’t understand that pack of girls at all). Once I finally decided/realized the disorienting audio mix was intentional and just started watching it, it was pretty great. Better than Lucy, not quite Her, but either way an amazing year or so for Scarlett Johansson (plus I even thought she was great in Winter Soldier).
I saw this last night, and loved it. I typically don’t like artsy, slow-moving, take-it-as-it-comes-in stuff, but BTS was very evocative.
Interesting though – to me and the wife, SJ pulled off a Sean Young, Blade Runner Nexus 6 performance. I mean, the dark hair, heavy eye and lip makeup, dark hair… when SJ tripped on the street, I commented, “Yeah, the Nexus Fours were always a little flaky”. So I wasn’t expecting aliens; I was expecting androids. And we were cracking up when Mr. Nice Guy finally made his move. “I wonder what he’ll think when he finds out there’s nothing to stick it in to.” ;)
Oh yeah, not to be too gross here, but how did you guys read that scene? I’m thinking I interpreted it differently from some of you.
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I thought her disguise was, uh, functional enough that as far as that poor gentleman knew, he was doin’ some sex, but then she freaked out when he finished because she wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t get the impression that the guy knew anything was wrong beyond being confused by her panicked reaction. Nothing else really hinges on the particulars of what happened there, but it sounds like you (and people on the podcast) thought the problem was that they ran into problems a bit earlier in the process. I thought the guy would’ve been a lot more obviously confused/upset if that happened though.