UNDER THE SKIN
An intergalactic lesson in empathy
Spoilers for Under the Skin (2013)
It hadn’t occurred to me until I started rewatching Jonathan Glazer’s 2003 film Under the Skin, that we have essentially covered two films in which Scarlett Johansson plays an unknown entity that slowly gains sentience. Admittedly, in Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), her voice-only role as an AI that starts a relationship with Joaquin Phoenix is far more whimsical than her performance here as a shape-shifting alien preying on men across Scotland.
While loosely based on Michael Faber’s 2000 novel of the same name, Glazer, along with co-writer Walter Campbell shifts the story from an otherworldly creature dissatisfied with its role in life to one which gradually develops empathy and a sense of self, shining a spotlight on how we treat each other.
Johansson’s nameless character preys on solitary men from around the Glasgow area. Mimicking an attractive young woman, she has very little trouble luring men to their doom – sinking them into an abyss that Glazer leaves deliberately vague. Through deftly filmed, hidden camera interactions, she picks her victims by finding out where they are from and if they have partners or family who will notice their disappearance.
For nearly half the film she is a predator, giving little thought to her prey, and this cleverly subverts the gender balance. Imagine how a woman may feel around men when she is walking alone at night. Under the Skin posits the question, what if men had to worry about the same thing? There’s a confidence in each of the men she picks up; so sure, that they are about to have sex with an attractive woman, completely oblivious to the sort of danger that women would have to weigh up with every interaction of this sort.
However, her final potential victim changes the dynamic of the film. We have seen hints of growth within Johansson’s character. She becomes interested in the world around her; begins to connect with some of the locals. Her impassive nature starts to lean towards curiosity. Her final night in Glasgow, before the film starts to careen towards its climax, he meets a lonely man with facial tumours.
The man is played by Adam Pearson, an actor, presenter and campaigner, who has neurofibromatosis, which causes non-cancerous tumours to grow on his body. Glazer, quite rightly, opted not to cast another actor and cover them in prosthetics. Instead, he approached the charity Changing Faces, which offers support to people with visible differences in their facial appearance. The charity recommended Pearson, who gives an incredibly brave performance here.
Johansson questions him about his life; enquires why he must shop at night. Their interaction in the van plays out like any other of her hunts – without the context of later scenes, we would simply assume that she is luring him, with no consideration either way for his appearance. When they arrive at her hideout, she begins the process of sinking him into the abyss but stops to look at herself in the mirror. She releases him, afraid and naked, but alive.
Pearson would say in later interviews that he believed the film shows ‘what the world looks like without knowledge and without prejudice’. Her character, despite her intentions, shows kindness to him. She treats him like any other man and cannot understand why people would shun him or treat him differently.
It’s a scene that separates us from other creatures (on earth, or elsewhere). As a predator, Johansson only cares about her prey to the extent that they may leave people behind who could complicate matters later. Pearson, both in real life and in the film, has experienced predatory actions that are entirely human – they come from seeing someone who doesn’t look like us.
Pearson’s work outside of the film has included campaigning for characters with disfigurements to be played by actors with the same conditions. Similarly, he fights to see characters with facial deformities be anything other than villains. We are conditioned, by Hollywood movies, to see a facial scar and think villain.
In the film, when Johansson recognises how cruel humans can be to each other, she begins to assess her own role. She looked at Pearson without prejudice and could not understand why mankind chooses not to. Their scene in the van, when she comments that he has nice hands, is her first real show of humanity in the film – kickstarting a process that shifts Glazer’s vision from a cold, science fiction tale to something more human, more aware and ultimately, as we reach the final moments, more disturbing.
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Writers: Jonathan Glazer, Walter Campbell. Based on the novel by Michael Faber
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Pearson
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