Under the Skin (2013)

Written for RAF News Jan 2013

Scarlett Johansson assumes the role of an alien in human form that observes the surrounding life in Glasgow; stalking and seducing understandably eager young lads and trying to understand what it is to be human. Director Jonathan Glazer, who debuted with Sexy Beast, returns to cinema with his first film since 2004: a conceptual science fiction that can at times become hard to watch.

Film Review Under the Skin

Under the Skin is shot primarily through a series of hidden cameras that capture Johansson observing and interacting with the real townsfolk of Glasgow. We are thrown deep into the overwhelming sensory experience of shopping centres and crowds leaving a football stadium. Having adopted the voyeuristic alien’s perspective, these familiar experiences, accompanied by amplified sound, can be just as unsettling as the more experimental style that will endow the more sinister elements of the film. Implementing a style that intends to immerse and unsettle, Glazer effectively blurs the line between film and reality.

This siren like alien drives around in her van, a score of screeching drones foreboding the fate of the horny Glaswegians who enter. Forward and alluring, paired with the fact that she looks just like Scarlett Johansson, this succubus gives the young men very little chance to escape: seductively undressing  and coaxing them to a rather surreal demise.

The jumps from documentary style footage to the constructed scenes that feature more abstract visual effects, align you with Johansson as you become alienated and long for something to hold onto. There is not much dialogue and, with a central performance that is intentionally rigid and non-responsive, the film can drag along at times, particularly in the second half.

Under the Skin is a little more experimental in style, but it is truly an original film with moments of utter brilliance.

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echo chamber

their bubble of shared opinion

shielded them from the noise outside.

someone had read something somewhere

and almost impossibly so had another

and so the idea remained undisputed by the others.

their words would overlap whilst they nodded in consideration

offering a kind of preemptive agreement.

it all made sense

as though they knew this already.

the devil’s advocate took notes and conceded

later she would look for more information

but all she would find is affirmation.

the drug and drive of a lost generation.

overwhelmed by overpopulation

networks had helped to make the world seem smaller.

gifted with significance they could find someone who agreed

they existed in the vastness

in technology as in nature

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Snooze

A fan of Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia/Ultra album, I was never fond of this opening track – a take on Coldplay’s Strawberry Swing that ends with a snooze alarm for just that bit too long (fading in and out over the last minute of the song).

It was only recently however – when I was playing the album loudly through a decent soundsystem – that I came to appreciate this particular detail. An album based on the theme of nostalgia, Ocean recounts the fondness of his childhood memories from within a dream.. (a theme of blurring dreams into narrative that resonates with the twice referenced film Eyes Wide Shut)

Snooze alarms, like office-phone ringtones, are set to a certain pitch that irks you to stop the noise – waking you up or answering the call. So when this part of the track came on over the speakers, I rushed to my Ipod to skip to the next track… an impulse that I have since found to be engrained in my muscle memory when hitting my alarm off come the vulgar morning chirps of my phone. It placed me into the song – the narrative of Ocean waking up resentfully out of his dream to the rest of his album.

Still don’t like the song, but appreciate it a little more.

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Chi-Cha Leather

In a Bristolian independent cinema a trailer for Gangs of Wasseypur 2, a new Bollywood film, thunders into the room and steals everyones attention. The over-the-top style of these Indian epics seems to have now blended perfectly into the increasingly absurd level of Hollywood’s own action fare. So too, apparently, in the supporting song from the soundtrack: Chi Cha Leather, which gains it’s most powerful moment when the editing goes full Enter the Void.

The voice heard in the song is Durga, a 12 year old girl who was discovered singing this very song on local trains. The lyrics translate to compare the fake leather that makes up her shoes to the real leather of her heart – Chhichha meaning real, and the Hindi chhichhaledar meaning a bad situation, trouble, mess.

The song is strange and beautiful and I take every opportunity to play it to people with full volume and full bass. Opening with an almost 8-bit arcade chiming and sliding into the mystic tone of Durga’s voice, the drop brings in the intensity that creates it own surreal melody that at times slips very slightly out of time or pitch to remind of its own organic, cultural beginnings in a less digitally-perfected style.

I find something really alluring about this. Guess it’s just a bit different from what I am used to.

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What’s In a Name? Decoding the Ambiguity in Martha Marcy May Marlene

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2012) looks at fragility of the human mind and how it can be manipulated, in the process contorting personality and identity. It follows a young girl as ideals are imposed on her from conflicting perspectives of consumerist society and counter culture community – ultimately fracturing her sense of self. The following analysis will look at the crisis of identity that is titled in the film, as Martha becomes Marcy May and finally Marlene.

martha_marcy_may_marlene_movie_image_elizabeth_olson_01

Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) is a young girl who, along with her older sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson), had been abandoned by her father after the death of their mother. Seeking refuge and a new family she joins an alternative community in the Catskill Mountains of New York. The film begins two years after this induction as Martha flees the commune to her sister’s scenic lakeside retreat in Connecticut – her personality fragmented by her abusive experience.

Continue reading “What’s In a Name? Decoding the Ambiguity in Martha Marcy May Marlene” →

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