Cinematography

• long shot of her hiding makes her appear small and vulnerable
• desaturated/lack of colour when she looks up which is similar to the beginning of  the movie when it shows parts of Scotland. (The beginning bit also lacks colour but it’s not comprehensible)
• We see Laura from behind which is how the log man would be seeing her
• The camera is from her point of view when she wakes up (?)
• Camera shifts – we see what she looks like/what he see’s/she’s alien again
• Camera tilts up to the sky – heaven/death/a better place

 

Mise en Scene

• Sleeping in the tree’s shot – free/at peace/nature is big/nature plays a role/nature is powerful/she is connected with nature – both Laura and nature are unpredictable etc
• When she looks up at the trees (point of view), it’s desaturated and has a lack of colour
• Her face when she is holding it looks like the woman’s/alien’s from the beginning of the movie
• Smoke going in to the snowy air – lack of colour like the beginning of the movie/going to a better place
• Fire – stands out?/like she’s been cremated
• Snow and smoke are only temporary things and it feels ethereal
• The rapist has dirty clothes
• The environment is represented as a thing – throughout the film there’s shots of just nature
• Mise en scene/trees in the foreground partially obscuring Laura – outsider/spying/creepy/vulnerable if you feel someone is watching
• snowflakes falling down

 

Performance

• she runs and hides
• gets in the car (symbol of her old life) but it doesn’t start (symbol that she isn’t who she used to be) – a human thing to run to what should have been comforting
• he’s forceful and brutal
• she stumbles slowly
• peels of skin like clothing
• face still blinks like the woman still cried
• The way that she stares at the face shows empathy which contrasts to the beginning
• Looks at the face like it’s a mirror – see’s what she isn’t/wanted to be
• He’s chewing gum – gross/emotionless
• Motorcyclist has lost Laura – because she became so different he doesn’t know how to
• The way that Laura killed people was less violent (leading them) than the man
• He walks slowly towards the truck but it’s still threatening
• Tables have turned – hunter is being hunted
• Stops fighting – distant/accurate to real life/she feels a sense of inevitability

 

Editing

• long duration shot of the snow
• super imposed (?) – tree sleeping image
• Slow editing/low cutting rate when running away which is unusual for a tense scene but it doesn’t need to tell the audience to feel tense as it’s already scary enough

 

Sound

• calm music when Laura is sleeping in the trees
• no music when she is running because it is scary enough already
• horn – loud – diegetic
• she makes scared noises – emotion/shows brutality of the man
• hear running footsteps
• eerie noise – reversal of previous scenes
• drumming sound and then also calm-ish sounds when walking on fire
• Quiet when it’s the smoke and the snow
• lack of her sound when cornered and on fire – accepted her fate/the scene is scary and tense enough already/music didn’t need to guide us/we don’t know Laura’s thought but we’re still positioned with her/realist/audience can make their own mind up
• we hear what she hears when she’s asleep
• diegetic sound fades away when eerie noise comes on

 

Gender

• Male – predator (both men)/aggressive/violent

 

Ethnicity

• Scotland, for the alien, stands in for the whole planet
• Scottish men and woman stand in for all of humanity

 

Context

• Caspar David Friedrich – painting ‘wanderer above the sea of fog’ – motorcyclist – sublime – ironic reference as motorcyclist doesn’t think it’s beautiful/ blind to all that is good and beautiful

 

 

Narrative

• Aliens keep failing job/task – power in humans/weakness in them
• comparing ending to the beginning is important because it’s about Laura’s character arc and it shows the ideologies of the film
• Binary opposition of male and female
• Binary opposition of human and alien
• Film starts with her creation and ends with her death – full circle
• woman and Laura comparison – circular structure
• We associate with her by this point and feel empathy/sympathy
• narrative flip- she was the predator and now she’s the prey
• narrative flip – men and women
• alien – human – alien — we feel sympathy for her from human and onwards

 

Ideologies

• existentialism – what was the point of her existence?
• Marxist critique – she’s a worker/slave that was exploited (?) and punished/would have been punished for stopping her job
• Critique of women being object of representation of women

 

Notes

• Laura was given a false idea that everyone is nice – when she fell on the street
• we see things as she see’s them
• feel sympathy unlike her when she was an alien and then she shifts back into her alien form but we still feel sympathy for her
• she has become relatable as she acts more human and feels more like a human does