Cinematography

• Over the shoulder, high angle shot with Laura in the centre – places her above the others which makes her seem superior and predator like, it could also be how she see’s herself. The people in the background aren’t as relevant – like a herd

Mise en scene

• Fur coat – predator
• She’s alone contrasting to the majority of others
• Clothes –  the clothes are bold and picking out clothes is a very human thing for her to be doing. It can be interpreted as her adapting to being on earth or her purposefully wearing sexually provocative clothing

Performance

• Women getting make up done – society standards?

Editing

• Montage and fragmentation – when picking the clothes which makes it seem as though Laura knows what clothes she wants already
• Montage of others – the camera shows the aliens view of the world and learns from others

Sound

• The alien is quiet which contrasts to everyone else being very loud (diegetic/murmuring/indistinct) which makes Laura seem emotionless and isolated

Gender

• Critique of cinema’s emphasis on attractiveness- The alien doesn’t say much but is attractive (objectifying women takes away their voice – Julia Kristeva) and the audience could interpret that if Laura wasn’t attractive, there’s a chance that she would have been treated differently. When Laura does speak, it’s often to lure men.

Notes

• The man with a disfigured face causes her realisation of humanity as he’s the first men that she meets that doesn’t just want sex.
• Laura has a role/job and gets punished when she stops

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

Although at times the film was incredibly slow, it was actually quite interesting. My interpretation of the film was that it explored what makes us human. The film started with Scarlett Johansson’s character coming to earth and learning how to speak (or at least that’s what I thought was happening). She then had many conversations with different people in which the audience could tell she wasn’t a good communicator because she wasn’t human. During the earlier conversations, she would ask too many questions or even repeat what she had already asked them. Then she started killing people and I thought that ironically the more people she killed, the more human she became. The scene where the two men are trapped in water shows one man deflating as though everything “under the skin” had gone. To me I interpreted that as her becoming more human as though she was “taking” what was inside of them, but I could be very wrong. I also thought she became more human the more she killed because the more people she killed, the better at conversations she became. She never was great at it, but she was slightly better. I think she kept becoming more and more human until the point of empathy, which is why she didn’t kill the man with the disfigured face because she was now human. The moment she looked in the mirror showed her turning point and recognition of becoming more human. I think the film’s message was that empathy makes us human. Her not killing this man contrasted to her watching people drown at the beginning, showing how she now has empathy and questions what is morally correct making her human. I think the film included scenes of her attempting and failing “human” things like having sex and eating cake to show that that’s not what makes us human but caring for others is.

I liked the links between Scarlett’s character and the woman at the beginning, it showed how Scarlett had become human. When Scarlett was lying on the bed while her clothes were being taken off, it reminded me a lot of the scene where she took the clothes off the kidnapped woman. Plus, when she is out of her human skin at the end and holding her face which is still blinking, it reminded me of the close up of the woman’s face when she was crying. I also thought the TV programme was a reference to the beginning with the voice over of Scarlett’s character doing phonics and learning how to speak, that felt important in that moment because she was on her journey of becoming someone new again.

Although the plot could be very confusing with the lack of dialogue and narration, I thought the entire film was from the aliens point of view and that things like the overwhelming flashing lights in the club and the painful motif sound throughout was there to explain what was happening and also in some instances how she felt in place of narration. Although narration would have been incredibly helpful and maybe even appreciated, I think it would taken away from what the film is as it consistently defies logic but in beautiful ways such as, when she sleeps her body can be seen in the trees, emphasising that in that moment she was in peace which was a nice break from all the stress and killing. The entire film being mainly ambiguous was one of its main features and adding narration would have taken that away.