THIS WEEK: STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND
THE FILMS: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976, Nicolas Roeg), Lost in Translation (2003, Sofia Coppola), Under the Skin (2013, Jonathan Glazer)
Being in a new place is tough. Especially if you don’t know the language or customs. It’s an isolating experience that can make you feel like you’re on another planet—which is the actual case in two of this week’s three films. It takes time to adjust, and that process is what we see in the titles that make up our latest triple feature.
The Man Who Fell to Earth and Under the Skin in many ways tell the same story: An alien has come to our planet on a mission for the sake of his or her own race. The alien has to adjust but wrestles with things he or she couldn’t have anticipated. In the end, whether on purpose or by accident, the visitor finds their inner humanity.
Each of these films is told from the perspective of the visitor, putting us in their shoes as they try to understand the world around them. Their plight is always relatable. Whether it’s learning how to love, figuring out what to do with one’s life, or being sucked into watching an unhealthy amount of television, the stories told here give us a little more perspective on our own lives.
The Man Who Fell to Earth, Nicolas Roeg, 1976
About twenty minutes into The Man Who Fell to Earth, womanizing professor Nathan Bryce (Rip Torn) opens a book and finds a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder called “Landscape With the Fall of Icarus,” in which the mythological character splashes into a bay after his famously failed flight, but everyone on land goes about their day, not even noticing. The scene in this painting sums up this film.
Released in 1976, The Man Who Fell to Earth is British director Nicolas Roeg’s adaptation—along with the help of screenwriter Paul Mayersberg—of Walter Tevis’s novel. Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie, in his first leading role) is an alien who comes to Earth in a last-ditch effort to save his planet, stricken by a deadly drought. His goal: Find an energy source that can power a space program to bring his planet’s inhabitants—including his family—to Earth.
With the help of patent lawyer Farnsworth (Buck Henry), Newton starts Global Industries, an Amazon-like company that dominates in the communications field as well as everywhere else (he even plans a rocket launch into space, making him the first private citizen to do so). Newton soon makes more money than he knows what to do with, and all seems to be going according to plan when he’s sidelined by Mary-Lou (Candy Clark), a hotel maid who misuses alcohol. This distraction and his obsession with television make him forget his mission. Then Dr. Nathan Bryce, Global Industries’ chief scientific consultant, enters the scene, creating a 1970s paranoia subplot and greatly diminishing Newton’s chances at success.
Visual abstractions and layered soundscapes carry the viewer along on Newton’s journey as Earthly trappings swallow him, more grotesquely than he could have imagined, and he gets what he came to Earth for: He becomes one of us.
Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola, 2003
Strange lands don’t have to be new planets; they can be new countries, new towns, or even your own internal landscape. Those are the places Sofia Coppola explores in her follow-up to The Virgin Suicides: Lost in Translation. In it, Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a Yale-educated young woman who doesn’t know what to do with her life tags along with her photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi), who’s come to Japan for work. But her change of scenery doesn’t distract from her ennui—instead, it adds to it. Alone in a place where she doesn’t speak the language, doesn’t know the customs, and only has a few friends, she enters the hotel lounge and meets a partner in crime.
Bob Harris (Bill Murray), an American action film star, has traveled to Tokyo to shoot a whisky commercial. Amid his failing marriage, dwindling career, and midlife crisis, he forms a bond with Charlotte, and for a moment both find excitement in their seemingly listless lives.
Through the second act, the duo explore the city with a reignited energy. These scenes are quick, electric, and, as in many early Coppola films, backed by a vibrant, youthful soundtrack. Charlotte and Bob come to life singing karaoke, running from a club owner, and landing at house parties.
There’s an innocence to Bob and Charlotte’s bond. They are surprisingly a lot alike. Bob treats Charlotte like a daughter and sometimes like a life raft. The two of them, lost at sea, float along together in this strange new place and in unfulfilling lives. But for a brief time, they are alive.
Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer, 2013
In a Weekly Triple Feature double-header for Scarlett Johansson, in Under the Skin, her character, Laura, finds herself on a mission on an unfamiliar planet. And as with Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell to Earth, it veers off course.
This highly anticipated film from director Jonathan Glazer, which is very loosely adapted from Michael Faber’s novel, is a stylish and innovative look at humanity through the lens of an otherworldly visitor whose interactions are primarily predatory. Laura’s job is to provide sustenance for her race, which she does by luring men into her van and driving them to her home base, where they wind up in a viscous pool, their insides vacuumed out—in the end, all that is left of them is a shed skin.
Laura drives the busy streets of urban Scotland dead-faced until she spots a potential victim. Then she transforms into a bubbly, helpless woman. Her move is always to ask for directions. While some men seem immune to her wiles, others hop into the van at the faintest notion of sex. That’s where Under the Skin becomes like a documentary.
The men Laura picks up are real citizens, for the most part (i.e., not paid actors); they don’t recognize Scarlett Johansson and really think they’re going to score. Once in the van, hidden cameras capture Johansson’s performance as she puts the men at ease. With Mica Levi’s haunting and dissonant score in the background, the stage is set for the viewer to feel sympathy for the men. Laura eventually does, too.
One of the men she picks up (Adam Pearson) has a facial disfigurement and is incredibly shy. He cannot believe a beautiful woman has picked him up in the middle of the night and wants to take him home with her. He pinches himself. Laura abandons her mission and seeks to connect with humanity instead of stalking it. But what she finds isn’t quite what she imagined it would be.
FURTHER READING (LISTENING, AND WATCHING):
- The Sonic Landscapes of The Man Who Fell to Earth
- “How Lost In Translation Creates a Deeper Level of Intimacy Through Its Location
- Under the Skin | Audiovisual Alienation
WHERE TO WATCH: