When I saw “Under the Skin” at the Telluride Film Festival (TFF) last summer, I was struck with one emotion more prevalently than any other: the desire to angrily gouge my eyes and ears out with any dull tool available. Sadly, it was the only emotion I would feel for the duration of the film. It got under my skin, but not in the way it may have intended. I say “may have intended” because the film never makes any declarative statement whatsoever by which to glean what its intentions really are, beyond director Jonathan Glazer’s vague desire to depict the world through the eyes of an alien.
The description in the festival program sounded intriguing so I had every expectation that it would at least have provided some stimulating material to chew on for a couple hours. The experience of watching this film made me wish I was in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, where at least some year-old magazines or Highlights picture puzzles would have provided momentary entertainment. As I said when I walked out of the theatre, I wish I had more than two thumbs to give down to it. I cannot think of a film I enjoyed less than this one all of last year. The film takes itself seriously enough to qualify as camp. It is “tragically ludicrous” as John Waters would say, yet “Under the Skin” somehow manages to avoid even the meager accomplishment of unintentional laughter that camp normally produces.
The nominal plot concerns an alien who has come to earth to farm the planet for specimens of male humans via the power of seduction. To do so, she wisely steals the skin of a young woman with Scarlet Johansson’s looks in the film’s opening; a sequence that calls to mind the iPod commercials of a decade ago (shocker: Glazer made his name with music videos). While the book upon which the film is based was clear about the “Bad Taste” intentions of the protagonist (she plans to procure Earth men as food on her planet, similar to Peter Jackson’s 80’s film), Glazer does away with this plot and replaces it with…nothing. Critics have proclaimed this film to have made some grand statement about what it means to be human. Tripe like that should be your first sign that this film has nothing to say. Critics in general have gone gaga over it, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. If it said anything, it was that Johansson’s alien makes men’s penises stand at attention to such a degree that they completely ignore all the giant warning signs staring them in the face, urging them to turn around and run away from this personality-challenged bombshell who can’t stomach chocolate cake. This is the kind of film where the Fandango synopsis provides a plot that never materializes onscreen. What “Under the Skin” ultimately fails to do is provide any reason to pay attention to it.
Unfortunately, not a single moment comes close to realizing the heady description that promised a terrifying, revolutionary sci-fi film. “2001” it is definitely not-that movie had a point. This film is just lost in space. I was epically hoodwinked, in no uncertain terms, by the empty promises of the TFF program blurb. The film raises many questions, but no curiosity. We never learn what this creature hopes to accomplish, or what she hopes to gain, from these men. What does she do with them? What need do they fulfill? What motivates her actions? What will she do if she doesn’t succeed in her journey to Earth? Who is the mysterious figure on the motorcycle that mops up after her but whose face we never see? All the basic tenets of storytelling simply go by the wayside to watch man after man fall into the same trap. Why do these men persist in following her into an obsidian pool of nothingness? Has she cast a spell on them? Is she just so beautiful that men’s cocks stand at attention and all their faculties and biological triggers to avoid a threat to their lives fall away with their clothes at the prospect of sex with her? Perhaps I would have thought differently if the alien were some delicious stud like Tyson Beckford or David Beckham. I still think if a stranger wanted to pick me up off the street in a van, I would decline. Furthermore, if I had said yes and he drove me up to a remote, decrepit looking house, I’d make a hasty retreat. And even further, if I had still not given up at that point, once I entered the house and found an eerily empty, voluminous, endless expanse of space too large to fit into said house without the aid of Harry Potter’s magic wand, I’d book an even hastier retreat and just live with the blue balls for the evening. With the exception of the guy with elephantisus, most of these men could probably find a date whose house didn’t signal impending death. Why she should suddenly feel a pang of humanity, as many have said, is also never adequately explained. Where did she learn this behavior? Was it when she bashed that guy’s skull with a rock or when watching a family perish trying to save their dog in the rip tide? If she still cooly considered the Elephant Man acceptable meat, then why would his appearance suddenly give her pause? What could have inspired this alien to think and feel like a human? Was she even feeling human at all or is this more vague nonsense grasping for some raison d’etre? Since she never expresses any sense of character, it is impossible to believe in any potential transference, and hence it occurs in an emotional vacuum. Glazer seems to assume that the spooky imagery and inherent confusion wrought by the lack of explanation will suffice, and that the wan imitation of storytelling is actually giving us a blank canvas upon which to project our own vision of the world. We all know the horrible joke about what happens when you assume. Glazer has certainly made an ass of himself, and definitely of me because I watched the damn thing.
As another viewer at Telluride tried to defend the film to me- because it is told from the perspective of an alien, the experience is supposed to be alienating. We are supposed to see the world anew through the eyes of this foreign being. This reading made even less sense to me, as the whole purpose of a film or story is to draw you in, not push you away. Teenagers think ideas like this are incredible-adults should know better. Even if Glazer had not produced alienating tedium, nothing about the alien’s vision of our planet uncovers any shattering revelations that would cause us to bat a fake eyelash at. Even when the subject matter holds you at bay, a film should suck in your attention so completely that you are not aware of your surroundings, instead of just plain sucking. This is why you’re not supposed to talk or use your cell phones, or get up repeatedly in a theatre; because it breaks the mimetic spell of the experience. Normally when you leave a movie, you feel slightly disoriented, as if you’ve just stepped off a plane from the world onscreen and back into the real one you inhabit. I felt like this plane taxied around for 6 hours and never took off. There is no incident, no semblance of a climax to build towards, and no crescendo or emotional pull to invite you to identify with anyone or anything that happens. Glazer gives us only his formless indulgence in visual gimmickry. In the place of a film with some modicum of a story arc, he created an excruciating 108 minute flatline with the occasional meandering of a Steadicam to mimic atmosphere. Oh, are we supposed to identify with the alienation in a world that has grown ever more insular? I found it hard to identify with an alien dressed up like Scarlet Johansson, who says little, and whose actions have no discernible ambition.
Most of the film is Johansson wandering/driving around looking for men to do something with (the most we ever learn is that the pool that the men sink into seems to siphon out their insides, leaving their skin sacks to float around like the plastic bag in “American Beauty”). During my uncomfortable sojourn into Glazer’s drab, colorless vision of Glasgow, the film made me contemplate little more than the interior design of the theatre and the nap I could have snuck in, and would have felt more productive doing by comparison. By the time she observes the family caught in the rip tide, or actually tries to have sex with a man and freaks out, and in the end is shot and burned by a would-be rapist who discovers the Mystique-like skin lying beneath her human surface, I simply didn’t care any longer. Somehow, none of this even remotely induced a sense of interest in the proceedings. I kept waiting for some reason to emerge, some end goal, some actual revelation or delineation of character that would never come. At all possible points the film falls far short of compelling the viewer to care what happens to anyone. Even the sight of marginally attractive nude men on full erect display could not keep me engaged. Apparently these men really were strangers approached by Johansson in her van with the dashboard cam, and turned into actors for the project. A more interesting story would be what Glazer offered them to perform fully nude with their rifles cocked in a film that would be exhibited across the globe.
The whole experience was so pointless that it actually made me angry Glazer had spent years of his life trying to get this film green lit, and millions of dollars producing it, when that time and money could have been better spent treating world hunger, preserving national parks, or blowing it on a craps table in Monte Carlo. ANYTHING would have been better than this. It banks on the pretensions of cinephiles to retrofit the experience with meaning that never presents itself. Avant-garde experiments like “Flicker Film” or “Wavelength” at least provide some revelatory payoff if one devotes their attention to it (that is if “Flicker Film” doesn’t plunge you into an epileptic seizure). This one plunges you into a thick, immutable black pool of boredom that will only end when you stop watching, and never repays your investment of time and mental energy. My hatred of “Under the Skin” may have made me feel like an alien amongst the film critic community that has worked up a major hard-on for it, but not nearly enough to feel any connection to the woeful gibberish I endured. If you have trouble sleeping, this film will knock you right out.
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