Two very different approaches to science fiction are on offer this week.
In The Zero Theorem, we have Terry Gilliam's "everything but the kitchen sink" overload of ideas and production design. And then there is Jonathan Glazer's Under The Skin, one of the most abstract, minimalist films you will see this or any year. The first left me cold, the second riveted.
Under The Skin is based on the novel by Michel Faber, which concerns an alien on earth - in Scotland, to be precise - who adopts the form of a woman while seducing and abducting men, for nefarious purposes. While the novel elaborates the alien's motives and the fate of the men, Glazer pares everything to the bone - there is no explication at all, and very little dialogue. The result is strange and unsettling.
The opening sequence establishes Glazer's lo-tech method. A growing light, discs moving towards each other, a disconnected voice, an eye - these images and sounds combining to suggest the transformation of the alien into its human form, which happens to be that of Scarlett Johansson.
A dead woman's body is delivered by a motorcyclist, who will appear throughout the film, a sort of handler for this extra-terrestrial operative. In a white space as pronounced as the black one that will eventually engulf her victims, the naked Johannson undresses the woman and puts on her clothes. The precise sound design of the film is never more evident than here, as the brusque removal of the clothes, the sound of textile leaving flesh, rams home the clinical procedure of the alien's identity theft. Then it's to the shopping mall for some slightly less trashy clothes and lipstick, before hitting the road in her white van, driving around Glasgow and its environs, on the prowl.
If the Glasgow scenes seem authentic, it is because to some extent they are. Almost unrecognisable in a black wig and with a received Pronunciation Accent, Johansson was in character as she interacted with real people, hidden cameras recording the action. If a man and his responses had potential, he was told what was happening and asked if he wanted to take part.
It is worth being aware of the process, for its rewards are conspicuous. As Johansson walks around the city, drives through a Celtic crowd and is cajoled into entering a nightclub by a group of young ravers, we get a fulsome sense of human life, as coolly observed by someone who has never seen it before. Young and old, wealthy and poor, healthy and infirm, faces we take for granted in the day-to-day are lent a touching immediacy by this alien gaze.
Johansson is not only commendably game in these scenes, but perfectly pitches her character as both wide-eyed outsider and predator. This harmless-looking, comely young woman is deadly, the extraordinary way in which Glazer visualises her victims' fate at once aesthetically pleasing and terrifying.
When an encounter with a deformed man seems to throw the alien out of balance, she leaves the city for the west coast. Here she enjoys some surprising domesticity (a moment in which the Hollywood actress watches Tommy Cooper on the television is priceless), before finding that humans, themselves, can be predatory.
While Glazer's debut, the gangster movie Sexy Beast, showed a great stylist at work, it was Birth (in which Nicole Kidman believes her dead husband has been reincarnated as a boy) that revealed his penchant for the outlandish. Under The Skin's mode of storytelling will not be to everyone's taste, but succumbing to its strangeness is to experience an atmospheric, disturbing, thought-provoking mood piece that crawls under your skin and stays there.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article