New Weird: Under the Skin

-
If I made a list of 50 movies that I think are great, Under the Skin would definitely be somewhere in the late twenties, early thirties. This movie explores alienation within one's own self and our world. While it's weird enough that this alien woman prowls the streets finding people to sacrifice to a black pool that then later shows what I can only describe as guts on a trow, the alien begins to realize how immoral her role is.

There are specific scenes and moments that I would deem to be beautiful and are great to look back on. For instance, in the beginning when the alien is taking over from the last who failed in her mission, there's a tear from the failed alien (telling us that she grew feeling and became more human) and an ant that the alien looks at --she's clearly never seen one before and has no feelings towards it. I also want to mention the way she watches her first victim slowly sink into the black pool, watching him like an animal. What I love about the ant scene is that later, the alien sees a trapped fly and almost cries. This triggers in her a response to the deformed man that she has taken in and she does the opposite of what she's been doing and sets the man free.

A scene that was also beautiful, due to how disturbing it was, was the scene where the alien watches as a family disaster takes place in front of her. There's nothing more chilling than the alien dragging the surfer away and leaving the infant crying on the shore as it gets dark out.

After the alien rejects her mission we are carried through her travel as she deals with life, death, love, sex, and being hunted. She struggles and attempt to be human because she finds her own humanity, but will never be a human.

This movie is great because of how weird it is. If you go into it, knowing that there are going to be lots of questions, you'll enjoy it. One of the best moments is when she tries so hard to be human, but is rejected and we finally see under her skin. There's a sense of connecting and not connecting with humans and civilization that amazing here too. It is the goodness that she finds in people that ends in her downfall.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Literary Speculation

-
Image
"The Aquatic Uncle" "The Aquatic Uncle" is a strange story in that it doesn't really write in genre and more takes some elements from genre, but does stay mostly literary. When I first read the story I found it to be more of a folk tale. While the message in the beginning was hard to distinguish, rereading and talking about it in class gave me a better understanding of the story. While the story has fantastical elements, it takes a scientific idea and weaves it throughout --evolution. The story delves into things that come on land and go back into the ocean, like whales. It was interesting because there was a family reunion twist on the story that was also explored. The entire time I read this story I was imagining a cat and a frog being together. The author relates out knowledge of humans and we try to put it together in our head and he uses animals as stand-ins like most tales. This story is not dark or grim, but rather amusing and charming. She finds
Read more

Cyber and Steam Punk

-
Image
"Fragments of a Hologram Rose" is a story that just makes you think. There's a constant switch between points of view, yet at the same time it's not switching. By listening to these cassette tapes we're able to gather a sense of what a person has done. The time of this story is a bit confusing, as well. We constantly bounce between present day, the past, and a completely different place in what could be the present day or the future. I found it neat how there is really only one character in this story (Parker,) but we are able to get other characters through the holograms. There's a great contrast between the rotting United States (in the future of course) and his dreams through these sensory tapes. The structure of this story was very confusing at first, but upon a second read it's a bit easier to understand. The setting is pretty great as well. This dystopian future where people use sensory holograms as a form of escape and a drug and the rain is a
Read more

Satire and Sci-Fi

-
Image
I listened to the first hour and a half of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Each week tops my favorite thing that I looked at for that week. Although it's a fun listen, it does touch on some political topics in a satirical way. Right of the bat, the protagonist is having an issue with his city officials because they are trying to take his house down to build a new road. This bit is taken even further when the protagonist says the only way he found out was by going into a dungeon with a torch, that had all kinds of "beware" signs just to get to the file that would alert him of the change. This is something that commonly happens in our world today. The want for progress and new things that are supposed to better our world are often hidden from us, do not better the world, and actually inconvenience us all. The icing on the cake with this example is when they go as far as to explode the planet Earth because in space they are building a new space way
Read more