Year: 2014
Director: Jonathon Glazer
Glazer’s third film, the product of ten years work, topped many best-of-year lists in 2014, without setting the box office on fire. Watching it it’s clear why, it’s a sombre, beautiful and largely wordless experience that remakes Glasgow and the Highlands as deeply alien worlds.
Scarlett Johansen, unearthly in beauty in most contexts, here is an alien wandering the streets of Scotland tasked with abducting willing Scotsmen. We see her don a dead woman’s clothes, then stalk her prey in a white transit van – picking them up on pretexts and taking them back to a house that appears to house an enormous subterranean oil tank, into which her victims sink.
The plot is slender, so I won’t dwell on it too much. Glazer isn’t interested in the details of why the aliens are here and what happens to the abductees – this is explored much more in Michael Faber’s source novel. Rather, he’s interested in how Johansen’s predator moves through the human worlds of shopping centres, ring roads and hotels as a tiger might through a herd of gazelle. It was much noted on release that Glazer used non-professional actors and hidden filming – both of which serve to intensify our sense of disorientation from conventional plot and character.
Two outdoor sequences – one a third of the way through and one at the end – are harrowing, one in particular being virtually unwatchable and with a visual impact that recall Eastern European masters Tarkovsky and Kieslowski.
Lastly, the music by Mica Levi both appropriate and a world away from conventional film scores, taking us into an alien soundworld to match Johanssen’s unearthly look.
It’s intense, disturbing and not for everyone – but as an expression of film-making as an art it’s entirely successful.
And apologies if we posted it on the old site, but I thought it would provoke a discussion here, especially as I’m guessing many are like me catching it on DVD rather than at the cinema.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Cronenberg – who surely would have got to grips in a very different but equally visceral way with Faber’s novel; and sci-fi that’s more about ideas than spaceships.
Nice review.
Extraordinarily powerful film, and aptly titled: I feel like I’m still trying to forget some of the disturbing imagery it contains.
Great, if odd, film. As a dialogue-free way of depicting an alien amongst us Scarlett Johansen walking through a run-down Scottish shopping mall is hard to beat. The scenes with the physically deformed character were surprisingly touching. Tough going in places but I liked that it didn’t spell everything out; you could join your own dots.
Enjoyed it…I think. Thought the ‘found’ actors worked really well, to increase the unsettling tone.
Was the motorcycle bloke her alien mate?
In the novel her alien ‘boss’ is a much more developed character and clearly has more direct relationship with her than in the film, where he appears to be more of a ‘clean up guy’.
Right – makes sense
I think that the motorbike guys were a kind of maintenance crew, there to clean up when things went wrong and also to ensure that the Johansen character stuck to her task.
What was really alarming about the film was the sheer coldness of the directorial eye. It’s not even a cruel film, it’s just a totally dead-eyed, impassive view of a universe in which there is hunter and prey and no remorse at all.
I didn’t feel that (I assume) death in that black pool looked that bad – it seemed to almost be a release??
That black pool was the absolute stuff of nightmares, for me. (*Spoilers*).
The other guy, slowly decaying, floating towards him, attempting to communicate, reaching out to touch him, and then suddenly just collapsing like a deflated paper bag. Absolutely horrible.
But the most disturbing moment in the whole film is the sight of the little kid on the beach, no more than a couple of years old, trying to get to its feet, wailing in terror as its parents drown a few metres away. Ignored by the motorbike guy and simply left to die.
Christ, you’ve got me thinking about it all again now. It took forever to get this film out of my head.
I see what you mean but I could maybe imagine there was something ‘other-dimensional’ – the soul transferring elsewhere.
I do agree with the kid on the beach
I liked it; the soundtrack in particular is terrific.
Too weird for my wife, though. She now cites it as a prime example of my dodgy judgement when it comes to choosing rental films.
This was viewed at MM towers as part of Grumpy Dads Film Club, an occasional meeting of like-minded souls. Ms Moles dipped in and out.
1982: Boys From The Black Stuff – Inhumane woman destroys the lives of working class men with impenetrable accents.
2014: Boys In The Black Stuff – Inhuman woman destroys the lives of working class men with impenetrable accents..
If there was an ‘up’ button I’d be jabbing at it like a Fanta fuelled kid playing Space Invaders.
SPOILERS AHEAD
A film that has been going round and round in my head since November. Quite extraordinary.
Just by the way it begins with the odd static abstract images, those odd vocal sounds. (the she/alien forms learning vowel sounds)? I knew I was in for an interesting ride.
To me, I think a major contributing fact for its uniqueness, is the reality aspect and that it is set in Glasgow. If it was Scarlett Johansson cruising round the streets in an RV in Tucson, Arizona, picking up actors you recognise from Justified, it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective.
I thought SJ was great in Ghost World, but she has gone up so much in my estimation as an actor now. Everybody else’s performances were excellent too.
My most heartbreaking moment of the film was the brief close up of the disfigured man not quite believing his luck, pinching his own hand with grubby fingernails. And he whispers to himself, “Dreaming.”
And that incredible soundtrack! I’m so glad I watched it alone at midnight. Couldn’t sleep after.
*SPOILER* The reveal at the end is one of the most breathtaking images I’ve *ever* seen in a cinema. Stunning. What happens afterwards is horrifying, even more so for being presented in such a deadpan way. I’d certainly watch it again. An extraordinary turn from Scarlett Johanssen.