{"id":2850,"date":"2016-03-09T07:00:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T15:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/?p=2850"},"modified":"2016-03-09T08:08:24","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T16:08:24","slug":"under-the-skin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2016\/03\/under-the-skin\/","title":{"rendered":"On watching and listening to Under The Skin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pal William handed me a DVD of\u00a0Under The Skin\u00a0<\/em>last week, a movie that we had talked about before and which he\u00a0recommended with such enthusiasm that I bumped it up my queue. Took me a while to finally pop the disc in, but glad I did. The movie is bizarre and unsettling and wonderful, and Scarlett Johansson’s character makes me afraid and aroused at the same time. In the beginning, it is a strange mix of what feels like candid, unscripted moments of Ms Johansson driving around a strange land and picking up\u00a0strangers. Scenes of seduction that make you hold your breath while\u00a0waiting for the pay-off. When it ended, two-odd hours later, I found myself tingling with excitement, the kind \u00a0that comes from consuming something that is beyond what you expected. [ref]I have yet to watch\u00a0Her\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Lucy<\/em> – two very unlike films, I know, but part of ScaJo’s recent filmography that convinces me that this lady is one of the finest actors in the business today both in terms of skills and the choices she makes. I loved\u00a0<\/em>the short appearance in\u00a0Chef<\/em>, for example, and her\u00a0New York Jewish girl in Don Jon<\/em>.\u00a0[\/ref]\n

Nowadays, I prefer\u00a0to go into movies without the burden of expectations that the publicity machine brings\u00a0along. Oh, I am not talking about the big-budget franchises. That’s an infinite hype train subway where the exit doors lead to yet another platform and yet another\u00a0ride. But it’s films like this, that come sans trailing numbers or\u00a0colon-separated sub-phrase in the title, that bring me the\u00a0most joy. Not just the way they play with the monotony of the three-act structure, but the way they give an actor like Johansson a role\u00a0beyond the mundane.<\/p>\n

But therein lies the problem – not boarding the hype train\u00a0also makes it hard to pick a journey, and sometimes the ones you pick prove unworthy of your time. My criteria for this is simple – if I pause or get distracted while watching a 2-hour movie, I rethink whether it’s really worth my time. One of the ways to get around that is to watch movies only in someone else’s company, but that brings down the opportunity to watch a film at home by a large degree. I realized, after having finished Under the Skin<\/em> in one non-stop sitting, how rare it had become for me to switch on my TV after I get home.<\/p>\n

What also\u00a0got me about that movie was the judicious use of music throughout the nearly-wordless\u00a0sequences. Violins that play\u00a0like cancerous lungs gasping for breath; creepy pitch-bends that make me\u00a0feel as if there are glitches in my audio-spatial perception; the steady thump of a muted drum. This is music that truly lives up to the idea of the movie, the musical accompaniment\u00a0to an\u00a0anomalous entity exploring herself (itself?).\u00a0The composer is a British lady named Mica Levi, stage name Micachu, and this is the\u00a0first time she has worked on a soundtrack, can you believe that?<\/p>\n