Going UNDER THE SKIN with Resonance Ensemble

Mar 21

On Monday, March 25th, Resonance Ensemble teams up with the Hollywood Theatre to present a special screening of UNDER THE SKIN as part of the Hollywood’s Feminist March series. Through the Hollywood’s Community Benefit Screening program, the Hollywood Theatre hosts special screenings in support of—and in partnership with—local non-profit organizations. With a number of film lovers on our staff, Resonance Ensemble is thrilled to be a part of this wonderful community initiative.

Johnathan Glazer’s UNDER THE SKIN stars actress Scarlett Johansson as an alien disguised as a beautiful human woman, luring men to their deaths in a mysterious black void. Composer—and Resonance Ensemble staff member—Kimberly Osberg worked with Hollywood Theatre’s Anthony Hudson (Community Programmer) to curate this special screening.

Today, Kimberly shares more about the film, its meaning, and dives a bit deeper into the incredible score by composer Mica Levi.

When I first approached the Resonance Ensemble team about working with Hollywood Theatre to host a screening, a lot of great films were tossed around featuring incredible vocal music we could highlight—we could do a screening of Amadeus, Dream Girls, or The Wiz, or perhaps a documentary with a score by a living composer, or even a Pedro Infante movie (the last of which I still would love to bring to Portland)!

So how on earth did we settle on a screening of an artsy sci-fi/horror film with an instrumental score whose story follows an alien disguising itself as a human woman to prey on men?

One of the things I love about working with Resonance Ensemble is their willingness to address, discuss, and grapple with difficult subjects. They have commissioned and performed works about racism and racial violence, houselessness, mental health, gender discrimination and violence, abortion, immigration, and more.

While their concerts tend to put a focus on empathy, hope, and transformative action, the music programmed and commissioned also leaves space for difficult truths to be shared directly and honestly. You cannot promote meaningful social change without facing the harsh realities that require it.

Under the Skin is a film that places the viewer in a strange context—an outsider, viewing humanity with a fresh eye. From this vantage point, we are asked to consider a wide array of human behaviors anew—from love, parenthood, and make-up to sex, violence, gender roles, and what makes someone an outsider.

ABOUT THE FILM

spoilers ahead—skip down to the section on music to avoid them!

Under the Skin, a 2013 film directed by Jonathan Glazer and starring Scarlett Johansson, is loosely based on a novel by the same name. While the film was a box office failure, it was named the best film of 2014 by a wide swath of publications and individual critics–even making best-of-the-decade lists by the end of the twenty-tens. The score, created by Mica Levi (more on them later!), was named the second-best of all time by Pitchfork magazine in 2019, and was hailed for its deeply symbiotic relationship to the film and boldly avant-garde soundscapes.

The film is not an easy watch, nor easy to recommend to other people. The whole film is unsettling—sometimes through slow-burn sequences requiring patience, sometimes in tense moments of implied horror, and sometimes through brash and open violence. Under the Skin is a fascinating—albeit at times brutal—addition to a long legacy of horror-as-social-commentary.

In an interview with the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Glazer stated “it’s like an ‘it’ becoming ‘she.’ It sees what’s reflected and it believes ‘That must be what I am now…” The film follows an alien (neither “he” or “she” in human terms) that transforms into a beautiful woman in order to lure its prey—human men. The whole film follows Johannson’s character, and gives us several scenes where she doesn’t display “normal human reactions” to a variety of different scenarios—her nudity is not sexual, her violence is not accompanied with anger or fear or shame, her witnessing people in crises does not gall her to help.

Over time, however, the alien starts to empathize with certain humans, becomes curious about the world around her, and abandons her hunting. She experiences kindness, she explores the fake body she inhabits. In the final scene, she is attacked by a man and the constructed body rips open—revealing the alien’s true form. The man, scared of what’s Under the Skin, lights it on fire.

While Glazer has mentioned in interviews he did not necessarily have a gendered intent, but a more humanity-focused one, many have viewed the film through a feminist lens—the alien experiencing what it means to be a “woman” in a patriarchal society, men’s fears of powerful women or women divorced from motherhood or sexuality, men’s rejections of what lies beneath the surface of women. The film does not show us how women actually are, but how they are treated. Whether it’s all good, all bad, or somewhere in-between is for the viewer to grapple with.

ABOUT THE SCORE

When Hollywood Theatre suggested we pick a film for their Feminist March series, this film was at the forefront of my mind. Not only because it’s a great (if devastating) film that explores so many of these topics, but because of the fantastic score by composer Mica Levi.

Composer Mica Levi (they/them) has written for film, symphony orchestras, and has even enjoyed a successful career as an experimental pop artist with their band Micachu and the Shapes.

Trained initially at the Guildhall School of Music in London, Levi’s extracurricular musical activities resulted in several albums, tours, and even a collaboration with the London Sinfonietta at Kings Place. Their band used non-standard tunings on the guitar, distorted effects, slowed-down samples, unusual time signatures, and even found-sound elements.

Hearing Levi’s score for Under the Skin, it’s hard to believe it was their debut film score. Using a limited set of acoustic instruments (largely strings, but also with flute, cymbals, a de-tuned drumset tom, and a block of wood), synthesized strings, and an arsenal of effects and filters, the score is impressively immersive.

Relying on just five main motives (in their own words, “her make-up, the cosmos, the aliens, her job music, and her feelings”), the themes go through a wide array of transformations and arrangements throughout the film.

“As far as I’m concerned, the cymbal rolls represent the cosmos; the planets, the powers beyond aliens and beyond people, the undeniable truth of it all. The fragmented, hustling, beehive material at the beginning of the film is meant to be the impossible alien energy that feels a bit uncomfortable to us; it has a lot of movement in it…It’s relentless. It sounds powerful. The drums are her sex drive - or prowling, her hunger. The melody that comes in, it acts as her perfume. It’s something that she puts on. She uses it to seduce these men. The swelling chords are her experiencing raw feelings. We used combinations of those throughout, to try and create an accurate representation of how it would feel to be her.”

— Mica Levi, from interview with Vice

While the gorgeous cinematography, engaging story, impeccable performances, and patient pacing of the editing creates quite an atmosphere, the music in this film is what pushes Under the Skin into a truly unique experience.

When we can’t discern what the origin of a sound is, it unsettles us. Levi uses this discomfort to great effect throughout the film by playing heavily with the line between “real” and “synthesized,” masterfully obscuring what’s being played by a live performer, what strange sounds are manipulations of live performances, and what are purely synthetic instruments.

A great example of this appears in the cue, Love, about 80 minutes into the film.

The lower strings tremolo, with some playing sul ponticello (a thinner, wirey tone), and some playing sul tasto (a duller, more muted tone). The upper strings gliss, eventually percollating in irregular rhythms. The glissing gestures and sustains, however, are doubled by synthesizers—overpowering the acoustic strings in the final mix—giving the whole cue a cold, mechanical feel.

Levi collaborated closely with sound designer Johnnie Burn—it’s difficult to discern when watching the film what sounds are diegetic (in the world of the film, heard by characters on screen), and what is purely score. Is that a pizzicato in the strings, or a dampened recording of water droplets? Is that murmur a gush of ocean water, or a wave of tremolos from a group of detuned string instruments?

These layers of uncertainty play with the ear to great effect throughout the film, adding exponentially to the “unsettled” atmosphere—and leaving space for deeper questions about what makes something human, what makes something synthetic, and what makes something real.

Final Thoughts

I love the Hollywood Theatre—the beautiful historic building, the awesome mix of new and old films, the outdoor screenings at parks in the summer, their dedication to presenting movies on actual 35mm and 70mm film when available, and the partnerships they support in the community—I couldn’t imagine a better partner to present Under the Skin on the big screen. It’s a real treat to both fans of the film who missed its theatrical run, and to new watchers who get to experience it for the first time as it was intended to be seen.

This screening won’t be for everyone, but for the people who come I know it will be a really powerful experience.

See you at the movies!