Under the Skin (2014)

[baumer]

Discuss

[lilmac]

This review nails it on the head. 

http://talkbacker.com/movies/reviews/new/skin-review-unorthodox-film-far-year/id=30596

 

 

 

The director, Jonathan Glazer, said that he wanted to take a minimalist approach to the material, stripping the plot to the bare essentials.  Unless you've read the book (which I haven't) and know the ins and outs of the plot, my fear is that he went too far.  It is impossible to follow all that's happening without knowing the plot beforehand.  

 

I encourage everyone who wants to see this film to read a few reviews beforehand and go to Wikipedia and read what's the book is about.  Under the Skin is rare in that in order for it to be watchable, you have to know what's going on.  

 

I give Under the Skin a 'D'.  The director/writers tried too hard to be edgy, experimental, and abstract but forgot to make a filmgoing experience worth our while. 

[Plain Old Tele]

Hoping to watch it this weekend...

[Jake Gittes]

Gets here this coming Thursday. Can't wait.

[JohnnyGossamer]

Seeing it tonight... Will edit post afterward.Whoa. Hmm. Well. Best allow it to digest.

Edited April 23, 2014 by JohnnyGossamer

[lilmac]

I had so many questions. 

[JohnnyGossamer]

I really took to the disorienting reality spun together by Glazer's images and Johansson's performance. The ever present fog suited the film's theme well. A very bizarre meditation on what it is to be human, what it is to be alone. Downright chilling in spells due to unsettling, trance like score.I also really took to her growing discomfort in human skin. Her relating to the deformed young man, granting him mercy. Her wanting the comfort, intimacy of the kind stranger, though in vain given her alien limitations. And, her eventual demise at hands of a human sexual predator.The fog and, eventually, the woods she retreated to mirrored her lost, fractured, confused psyche.Haunting and poetic, albeit a flawed film.Very curious to read Tele's views. Under The Skin certainly treats, or at least attempts to treat, filmmaking as high art.B+I failed to mention how well her the lair she lured prospective meat to so effectively illustrated the mystery, emptiness and lonely nature of death. It felt as if lifted from the macabre imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. It had me thinking about his short story, Masque of the Red Death.

Edited April 24, 2014 by JohnnyGossamer

[lilmac]

I really took to the disorienting reality spun together by Glazer's images and Johansson's performance. The ever present fog suited the film's theme well. A very bizarre meditation on what it is to be human, what it is to be alone. Downright chilling in spells due to unsettling, trance like score.

I also really took to her growing discomfort in human skin. Her relating to the deformed young man, granting him mercy. Her wanting the comfort, intimacy of the kind stranger, though in vain given her alien limitations. And, her eventual demise at hands of a human sexual predator.

The fog and, eventually, the woods she retreated to mirrored her lost, fractured, confused psyche.

Haunting and poetic, albeit a flawed film.

Very curious to read Tele's views. Under The Skin certainly treats, or at least attempts to treat, filmmaking as high art.

B+

 

I failed to mentioned how well her the lair she lured prospective meat to so effectively illustrated the mystery, emptiness and lonely nature of death. It felt as if lifted from the macabre imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. It had me thinking about his short story, Masque of the Red Death.

 

The protagonist is Isserley, an extraterrestrial sent to Earth by a rich corporation on her planet to pick up unwary hitchhikers. She drugs them and delivers them to her compatriots, who mutilate and fatten her victims so that they can be turned into meat—human ("vodsel") flesh is a delicacy on the aliens' barren homeworld.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Skin_(novel)

 

 

Did you understand the scene where the meat was on a conveyor belt and being incinerated in the furnace?  

[JohnnyGossamer]

The protagonist is Isserley, an extraterrestrial sent to Earth by a rich corporation on her planet to pick up unwary hitchhikers. She drugs them and delivers them to her compatriots, who mutilate and fatten her victims so that they can be turned into meat—human ("vodsel") flesh is a delicacy on the aliens' barren homeworld.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Skin_(novel)

 

 

Did you understand the scene where the meat was on a conveyor belt and being incinerated in the furnace?  

I had an idea given something seemed to vacuum out the insides of the first victim, the shot soon after was a conveyor belt of blood/guts heading toward a fire to be incinerated. I didn't know who was going to eat it or if it was going to be eaten. I didn't much care. The image of itself I found disturbing enough. But, honestly, no, I didn't realize the victims were being turned to meat to be eaten.

[lilmac]

I'm going to modify my grade to a B-.  The more removed I am from the film the better it gets....

[Plain Old Tele]

Okay, that was all sorts of fucked up.

[Plain Old Tele]

And I liked it a great deal. Tentative A-, for the moment.

[Ezen Baklattan]

Wow, what a trip. Not only is it incredibly well made with a devastatingly effective musical score that really gets under your skin (pun incidental), and it certainly succeeds in creating atmosphere perfectly. Some of the shots in this film are just flat out amazing. That alone would have made this a memorable experience (it certainly worked for Stoker), but there's something ever bigger at play here. It's a strange and wholly abstract film, but part of the fun comes from dissecting its parts and finding the meaning in it. One interpretation I have is that it's a commentary on the standards of beauty in society, given how generally attractive Scarlett Johanson is, the various people she meets on her journey, some attractive, one greatly disfigured, and the various scenes that glimpse into the materialistic beauty that exists in a lot of places. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's just my two cents.

 

Either way, it's a really great mindbender of a film, so go check it out. 

[JohnnyGossamer]

And I liked it a great deal. Tentative A-, for the moment.

It's really a film that needs to be experienced. I usually hate when people employ that phrase to describe a movie. But, in the case of Under The Skin, it's truly apt. It's the kind of film that requires you to surrender yourself and allow the images to wash over you.

Edited May 3, 2014 by JohnnyGossamer

[Plain Old Tele]

Wow, what a trip. Not only is it incredibly well made with a devastatingly effective musical score that really gets under your skin (pun incidental), and it certainly succeeds in creating atmosphere perfectly. Some of the shots in this film are just flat out amazing. That alone would have made this a memorable experience (it certainly worked for Stoker), but there's something ever bigger at play here. It's a strange and wholly abstract film, but part of the fun comes from dissecting its parts and finding the meaning in it. One interpretation I have is that it's a commentary on the standards of beauty in society, given how generally attractive Scarlett Johanson is, the various people she meets on her journey, some attractive, one greatly disfigured, and the various scenes that glimpse into the materialistic beauty that exists in a lot of places. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's just my two cents. Either way, it's a really great mindbender of a film, so go check it out.

I thought it was more a commentary about how we all wear masks of one sort or another, and how unsettling it is when there's no mask at all.

[Ezen Baklattan]

That makes sense, too. There's definitely a discussion of artificiality, and I think that both of our arguments touch upon it in some regard.

[Gopher]

Favorite film of the year. I'm basically at a loss of words as to how I talk about it but I audibly said "holy shit" at multiple points in the theater. Incredible imagery and music, but the movie is ScarJo and she kills it. 

[The Stingray]

It's really a film that needs to be experienced. I usually hate when people employ that phrase to describe a movie. But, in the case of Under The Skin, it's truly apt. It's the kind of film that requires you to surrender yourself and allow the images to wash over you.

 

Definitely an experience. I haven't felt that way about a movie since Mulholland Drive tbh (and Gravity, although that was a very different type of experience).

 

Your review mirrors my thoughts exactly, so there's nothing left for me to say other than that I thought it was brilliant.

 

A

 

PS: That scene at the beach, with the baby crying and it's getting dark and he's all alone, was f**king disturbing.

Edited June 26, 2014 by The Stingray

[Ezen Baklattan]

Yeah, the Lynchian qualities in this were extremely clear. What a disturbing, awesome, fever dream of a movie.

[Lizzy]

I finally saw this after both being a fan of Glazer and having read the novel a couple of years ago. I was blown away the visuals, music and the amazing performance by Scarlett. The minimal dialogue was an interesting choice but it definitely added to the tension of the film. An A from me.