Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Under the Skin
2014 · Jonathan Glazer · Under the Skin on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch her face behind the windscreen as men walk past. (performance)
Daniel Landin keeps the camera close inside the van with the wet city sliding over the glass. Johansson reads each man and nothing moves in her face. No want, no pity, only assessment.
Payoff: The point of view you have been handed is not a human one, and the film settles that before a word. In the reading: icon of quality. The reading calls this a qualisign: a still reflecting face holding one quality, here watchfulness and almost nothing else.
Notice the grainy street footage of real passers-by. (camera)
Glazer hid small cameras in the van and around Glasgow and filmed Johansson approaching men who had no idea. Available light, overcast, no glamour. Those reactions are genuinely unrehearsed.
Payoff: The coldness is not a style laid over the world. It is what a lens catches when nobody is performing. In the reading: engramme / photogramme. The reading calls this the gramme: the camera as pure matter, the world filming itself with nobody behind the lens.
Listen for the detuned strings crawling under the pickup scenes. (sound)
Mica Levi built the score from violas slowed and processed into something insectile. It throbs during the hunting and turns into a queasy pulse in the void. Dialogue is sparse and often hard to catch.
Payoff: The music hands you the inside of a creature whose face is giving you nothing at all.
Notice how every encounter starts at the van window. (staging)
Each encounter follows one script: a lone man, a question through the window, an invitation to get in. Glazer repeats the setup until the routine reads like a procedure.
Payoff: The repetition teaches you her method before you learn her purpose.
Count how long a shot holds after its point lands. (cutting)
Paul Watts holds faces and landscapes well past comfort. The early stretch runs as a repeating procedure: spot a lone man, talk, drive, start again. The rhythm is deliberate and hypnotic.
Payoff: The repetition teaches you the routine.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch her face. The film runs on how little it gives you.