Most of the opening is jarring, possibly to make the audience feel like an outsider just like Laura and to make us question what’s happening.

Mise en Scene

• blue cold light – entering another existence/eye being made
• exploded projection with a planetary feel or an eye being made
• black eye (no soul) being formed/squashed in (‘eyes are the window of the soul’)
• road and river seen near/next to another and presented like they were the same
• woman still alive
• white background suggests the woman is a ‘failed’ alien. Cycle is ended at the end of the film.
• Woman’s face look’s like Laura’s at the end of the movie
• Don’t know where they are but it doesn’t matter
• Costume design
• woman looks like Laura
• Ant ECU – vicious look but is fragile which contrasts to Laura
• Space craft and lights
• In a dirty and run down house (looks abandoned)
• City life against country life (like at the end of the film)
• Scotland represented as cold/wet etc

 

Cinematography

• CU of blue light
• Use of black and white – woman is suggested as an alien that has become more human because it’s a white background not black like Laura’s void
• ECU of eye makes it seem alien like because it’s disturbing/uncomfortable
• ELS or LS of alien when picking up the ant
• high key and high contrast (ant etc)
• high key white background makes dark figure (cold/empty/emotionless)
• extreme low key to high key is jarring, it challenges the viewer. It makes you unsettled at question what you’re watching

 

 

Performance

• motorbike man doesn’t speak and quickly and easily finds the woman (unnerving/ emotionless/focused)
• Aliens morality is off as she seems to be more interested in the ant when the audience is concerned for the human
• The woman cries (alive/paralysed/emotion)
• Alien is emotionless when undressing her and drops her head down (focused/emotionless)
• begins to explore the world when she sees the ant

 

 

Editing

• Graphic match/match cut of circle to eye being made

 

 

Sound

• Speaking noises – learning how to speak?
• hard to listen to non-diegetic noises that are fast paced, like it’s building something and mechanical and inhuman which is jarring
• close sonic perspective of the woman when clothes are being removed (muffled) which is uncomfortably intimate and could be from the woman’s perspective

 

Representation

Gender

• Female – Alien showed as having no emotion but the woman (who might be an alien as well) is shown to have emotion
• Male – shown as emotionless

Ethnicity

• Alien that takes a human form

 

 

Narrative

• Binary oppositions: city/country, city/nature, human/alien
• jarring cinematography/sound etc to confuse and un-nerve the viewer to make the audience feel like an outsider for the rest of the film

 

Ideology

• Ant and alien are workers. Exploited worker (woman). (Karl’s belief that workers will revolt against the industry?)
• Positioned with alien and briefly with the woman. Originally positioned with no one?
• Identity – woman looks like Laura

 

 

Note

• because Laura exhibits coldness and doesn’t show empathy for the woman, we don’t feel empathy or sympathy for her but this changes as the movies continues