Lorna Irvine reviews Jonathan Glazer's 'intense, impressionistic journey' through Scotland.
Jonathan Glazer's experimental delve into identity and otherness, based on Michael Faber's acclaimed novel, is an intense, impressionistic journey across the wilds of the Highlands and the wilds of Sauchiehall Street of a Friday night.
Scarlett Johannson as an unnamed alien (almost unrecognisable in wavy black wig) steals the clothing of a young woman and takes on a predatory female form, picking up men in her large truck then seducing them: the female gaze is therefore being served here. She is herself a camera, always observing, the better to burn images into her retinas and glean some understanding of human motivation—and where better than Scotland?!
To call the film sci-fi, thriller or guerilla would be to simplify- it is all three, and while there are some Kubrickian flashes in the imagery, not least the extreme, clinical close-up of the eye in the opening scene and nods to both Reygadas' Post Tenebras Lux and Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth in the most disturbing sequences (the beach scene with an abandoned child, the 'pop' of deflating prosthetics and the final, horrifying ten minutes), it's still very much Glazer's vision—his pop video/advertising slickness permeates throughout. Graphic sex is mostly avoided, and aside from two sickening acts of violence, all is implied.
The hidden cameras follow Johannson around the St Enoch shopping mall, through a nightclub that looks like it could be the Glue Factory, across Byres Road and through Central Station. Much has been made of this way of filming and it works beautifully, casting no judgement as would a documentary.
There is no A-to-B-to-C linear narrative: to provide one would be merely to defeat the purpose. Glazer's imagery is as scratchy, discomfiting and memorable as the nervy soundtrack by Mica Levi (from pop-in-a-blender band Micachu and the Shapes), which itself owes a lot to Goblin's Suspiria and Hermann's Psycho.
Above all, it is not Johannson's impenetrable stare, her seemingly casual disdain for the banal lifestyle choices of the people she trails, or the endless ominous tracking shots which most haunt the viewer—but the sense of stillness.
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