Archief - Under the Skin

Mégane zei:

wtf is dit voor iets?

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Een uitstekende film.

PBR Streetgang zei:

Een uitstekende film.

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idd, met een naakte Scarlett Johansson

camino zei:

The godfather 1&3 vind ik echt de top.
Of een serie als Hannibal daar hou ik ook wel van.
Films als carlito way of donnie darko vindk ook super.
Alleen films als rec en the blair witch en die activitiefilms vindk maar nikske maar soit, we wijken wel ver af nu vd topic .

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Wacht, wacht, wacht! Gij vond Godfather pt3 beter dan pt2? Heiligschennis!

Moar thoughts!

jimjimgreen zei:

I think the formative scene is the seduction of the deformed man - she sees a side of humanity, one which oppresses people, isolates others and begins to feel (shock horror) compassion. There's a moment where she goes downstairs and it's ambiguous as to whether she's killed him - we assume she has - and she looks in the mirror for what seems like ages. Bear in mind the role that mirrors have played in identity formation and this scene becomes a fully-fledged transformation.

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you refer to the part where she sets the man free after looking in the mirror... I very much agree that this is formative scene and that it could be interpreted as her connecting with humanity but I am not sure if her motives are at that point truly in line yet with something that we would begin to recognize as human. Remember that after she looks in the mirror, she also looks at a mosquito that keeps bumping into a glass pane as it desperately tries to get out. To me that was a flashback to the beginning where she picked up the ant from the other Johansson's body. it still all seemed rather cold and detached, almost as if she was running an experiment of sorts. I might be a horrible person for even coming up with this line of reasoning but at one point she asks the man, "you don't want to wake up do you?". She ends up letting him go but it's almost as if she's thinking that he, like that bug, keeps struggling to make something out of life but just barely manages it. It's not his fault that life treats him like shit, he just had the misfortune to be born that way. Just like we treat bugs like shit because well, they were born as bugs. Most people wouldn't bat an eyelash if you squashed one, they wouldn't notice its disappearance. In fact, they might even welcome the sight of a world without them. In short, she might be thinking that if he took a good long look at the cards he was handed, he would just off himself. Almost as if she were of the opinion that he should just give up and embrace sweet nothingness and that he only keeps struggling in vain because he doesn't know any better.

Goddamn I feel a bit sick writing all that down.

jimjimgreen zei:

I interpreted the scene [Johansson stripping her double] as an 'earlier model' who had been themselves harmed - probably by a man in a similar way to the man who comes at the end of the film.

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Oh man, that's great! I can't believe I hadn't thought about that yet. I've thought of the original Johansson as either a human who got set free by another alien hunter who also had succumbed to emotion or alternatively, if the meat removing skin harvesting thingy didn't work on women, that she was the victim of a special operation that the bikers conducted to ensure that they always had enough lures to perhaps be able to make their quota or something.

I guess it was the tear that stopped me from seeing her as alien but indeed she could have been an alien who had been hunting for years, much longer than the Johansson we saw. Such prolonged exposure to human influence might have turned her completely, making her essentially a human stuck in an alien body stuck in human skin?

EeZB8a zei:

The guy who was already there had flabby skin like on an elephant, which is what the intentions was, like in The Silence of the Lambs and Buffalo Bill starving them to loosen the skin, excepting they were after what was under it.

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Hmz, I didn't pick up on that. The blue darkened tones and the way they moved with seemingly stiff joints made me think that they were just being preserved until later use. What do you mean they were after what was under it? Do you think they ate the meat? To me it looked like they flushed it down the drain or perhaps towards an incinerator (the shot of the human remains rushing faster and faster towards that slit in a wall which emanated red light.)

Later on when she tries to eat the chocolate cake I got the feeling that was the first time she had ever tried stuffing something in her mouth. Although I guess it could also be interpreted as just not liking what we consider to be the finer things in life? That perspective is pretty cool too and would fit with their inability to properly experience emotion. If you can't derive pleasure from food like we do, then you are only going to care about its "functionality". Depending on their biochemistry, the energy value of protein extracted from hunks of meat likely does more for them than whatever they can get from the cake. I guess they would have to eat something so it makes sense. Then again, maybe they have a really slow metabolism, similar to how for example snakes can go for months on end without food. Hell they are aliens, they could have been running on background heat vibrations or electricity for all we know... It sure is fun to think about though.

AndySipherBull zei:

Like in the book, there are clear castes of elites and workers, and the workers have no agency to reproduce and therefore no agency to change the system. She might be evolved or bio-engineered to be sterile or lack sexual organs, even though she seems to hormonally retain female characteristics. So her motivation is just an artifact of biology, she feels compelled to realize a sexual and existential identity of which she is incapable. Her genes can't be transmitted and this is her cage, there's no escape, but like the fly banging against the glass, she tries anyway. Her sentience and individual identity has been reduced to a cosmic joke since she is nothing more than a biological robot. Of course she'd metaphysically rebel, even though it's completely hopeless.

Then Glazer cuts back to the smoke rising, I think he's saying it's a bigger cosmic joke. Everyone's incredibly compelling, life-changing, identity-changing, world-changing, discoveries, experiments and theories are just failed metaphysical rebellions; just the carbon cycle.

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Nice angle imo! De film is blijkbaar ook heel losjes gebaseerd op een boek. Denk dat ik dat ook maar eens in huis ga halen.

mcgrewf10 zei:

I think the choice of Scotland as a setting works on another level as well. As I was watching the film, I found myself struggling to understand the heavy Scottish accent of the characters. I was presented with all-but-nonsensical syllables, from which I attempted to create meaning. In this respect, I was in a position similar to Johansson's character. She is also trying to understand an alien language.

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Feel free to chip in!


Also, from an interview with Glazer; Was there any footage you couldn't use?
Yes. There were conversations she had where the person didn't want to give their consent. And it’s heart breaking, because what you’ve just witnessed is very special, and you’d like to be able to include it. And it’s a real wrench, because you know how well it encapsulates something that you could never contrive. Another thing that the film could express. There’s lots of different nuances of human behavior that are shown in the film, and you could keep shooting that forever.

:'( We'll never know what we missed.

Wow! Echt wow! Wat een filmervaring!
Ga deze zeker nog eens herzien, maar ik vind deze nu al een pareltje!
Heb na de film nog lang zitten nadenken over wat ik net zag, cool om dan de interpretaties van anderen te lezen.
Zo'n films wil ik meer zien

Het is inderdaad zo'n film die je wel doet nadenken. 1u45 + zeer trage film. Maar eigenlijk heb ik constant geboeid zitten kijken. Bij een slechte film zou dat gewoon niet lukken.
Ik vind wel dat ze misschien net ietsje té ver gaan in het open/mysterieuze van deze film. Want eerlijk gezegd kan iedereen hem op zijn eigen manier bekijken. Ik persoonlijk weet niet goed wat er over te denken.

Daarom een 6 a 7 /10. Misschien dat deze score wel wat stijgt als je er meer over nadenkt