Alien and sedition

The idea of an alien creature who visits Earth to teach us something about ourselves is a common one in sci-fi cinema, from the anti-war pleas of The Day the Earth Stood Still to the wide, humane eyes of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. However, few if any films have managed to get the audience to actually identify with the extraterrestrial’s point of view, to literally see the world through the coldly observant eyes of an alien. Under the mysterious and unnerving spell of Jonathan Glazer’s brilliant nightmare Under the Skin, however, humanity feels like the alien species, ripe for study and possibly primed for harvest.

Even nature behaves unnaturally in front of Glazer’s lens, and he films the fog-shrouded landscape of Scotland like it was a strange planet. The onslaught of thick Scottish burrs only adds to the film’s unsettling effect, and many of the onscreen performers speak English as though it were a foreign language. A fair number of the cast members in Under the Skin are actually non-actors surreptitiously shot Borat-style by Glazer and his crew, further blurring the boundaries of perception.

Scarlett Johansson stars as an emotionless but blankly curious alien driving through the cities and back roads of Scotland. She spends a lot of her time observing people, especially males, and we soon realize that she is trolling for victims. Her chilling methods and the aliens’ larger motives on Earth will be discussed by anyone who cares about cinema for the next century or so, but judging by Mica Levi’s discordant score and cinematographer Daniel Landin’s sinister images, benevolence and knowledge sharing are not parts of the plan.

Wearing a black wig and a fox fur coat that suggests Karen O dressed as the Ruth Gordon character in Harold and Maude, Johansson entices male loners and hitchhikers into her nest. Once ensnared, she uses an almost supernatural allure to overwhelm her prey. Much like certain predatory plant species, she lures her victims into a hypnotic submission, and Glazer does the same thing to the audience with his camera. He invites us to indulge in the pleasure of ogling Johansson, but at our own peril, making Under the Skin both a stunning example of the male gaze and a devious inversion of it.

Johansson is perfect as the alien seductress, a blithe black widow who gets increasingly weaker the further she explores a budding humanity that is only skin deep. Glazer uses the Maxim Hot 100 mainstay Johansson in much the same way that James Cameron used former Mr. Universe Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator—as both an almost too-perfect metajoke and as a back door to introducing some troubling ideas about dehumanization. Under the Skin makes Johansson’s blinding sex appeal and self-conscious acting style essential to her character.

More than anything, the film is interested in what it means to be human. After the first few victims, Johansson’s alien begins deviating from the plan, and her gaze refocuses, first onto other women and finally back onto herself. Unsettling questions arise about the nature of identity—does Johansson’s alien discover empathy only when she begins to discern between attractive and unattractive surfaces, or when she starts looking past surfaces altogether? Perhaps the film is positing that humanity means having the ability to fall in love with your own skin, even if there is literally nothing underneath.

Glazer’s auteur influences on Under the Skin are legion, including Nicolas Roeg (The Man Who Fell to Earth), Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry), Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey), and early Ridley Scott (Blade Runner), but the result is a true original that defies categorization. Under the Skin is lean on dialogue and comforting context, traits that will drive some filmgoers batty, but more conventional movie options will always exist.

Greatness should be determined not by how easily a film dissolves in your mouth, but by how deeply it infects your mind and how hard it rattles your soul. Under the Skin is a film that I don’t expect to ever leave me—several weeks after my initial viewing, I still shudder at the remembrance of certain images—and that’s the highest praise I can conceive.