The film opens with a sequence of measured shots, slowly revealing a Kubrickian blackdrop into which colour and shape are birthed over the swirling dissonance of an atonal minimalist score. Reminiscient of 2001, it is a hypnotising draw which expertly settles the brain’s waves into the rhythm of the following 2 hours.
We follow the dispassionate exploits of an alien dressed in a Scarlett Johansson suit whose mission it seems is to ensnare the men of Scotland in a gloopy black honey trap.
The pattern of seduce and destroy is presented in two styles. The first takes the form of a hidden camera documentary in which Johansson crawls the urban kerbs of Scottish cities in her white transit van, soliciting the conversation of unsuspecting members of the public who really were unsuspecting members of the public. It was only once lured into the van that the director Jonathan Glazer briefed the men about the conceit and hired those willing to be a part of the film to take part in the second of the film’s styled scenes in which Johansson takes her victims into a kind of parallel universe and leads them backward into the sticky black abyss where, one assumes, they are either preserved for study by her alien race or just eaten.
I really liked the film. It is slow but it is involving. Johansson’s performance succeeds in the same way David Bowie’s had to in The Man Who Fell To Earth. Her job is to demonstrate a range of ‘emotion’ through blank glances and the stilted misunderstood movements of her alien’s new human shell. Subtler than a silent movie, the measure of her success is how clearly she conveys the alien’s progression from ruthless efficiency through sympathy and towards eventual depression with very little acting tools allowed.
The direction is beautiful, never losing the measured purpose of the opening sequence. Scotland feels desolate and inviting. It’s a cold film and your engagement with it will creep up on you; that’s how it functions. By giving you a limited ‘way in’, the connection you eventually make with the film is a firm one.
Jon Bates Writes 