Third place:
Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel [126 points / 21 votes]
Second place:
Richard Linklater, Boyhood [172 points / 25 votes]
And the Muriel Award goes to...
Jonathan Glazer, Under the Skin [187 points / 28 votes]
“Throughout Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer avoids traditional exposition, more specifically any explanatory dialogue and instead allows the visuals to drive the narrative. Indeed, if it weren't being marketed as science fiction, and everyone had the chance to see it tabula rasa, one wonders how quickly everyone would be ready to use the word 'alien' despite it never even being implied the film’s dialogue. It’s tempting to think that this might associated less with the sci-fi label and considered more of an artistic Eraserhead-esque horror film.
“Glazer’s eerie, strange visuals and frequently beguiling situations suggest something closer to an avant-garde film than a traditional movie, but all these images convey and enhance a deceptively tight and lean story where every image and its progression to the next contains necessary details, while remaining vague and obscure enough at its edges to give a whole army of future cinephiles fodder to pick apart for years. One especially thought-provoking detail is the two pointed shots of bugs, details I suspect are key to understanding what drives Our Alien's actions.
“Undoubtedly among the most unforgettable and indelible directorial moments of cinema in 2014 was watching as Our Alien (portrayed by Scarlett Johansson) lured an average Glasgow young man (played by an actual average Glasgow young man, brought into the film after being an unwitting participant filmed by a hidden camera) into a sterile, expressionistic, endlessly black (did I mention very frightening?) room as she walked backward and he followed, naked, sinking into his own reflection as if wading into a body of water. It's not surprising to see that you can find many matter of fact descriptions of this scene as a sort of alien mating ritual/trap to harvest the solitary men of earth for food (or something along those lines) in most reviews of Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin.
“But for a moment pause and consider how slight the evidence is to support such a specific and literal reading of the events- the correct one, as it turns out- that transpire in the film: a brief moment of lights in the sky, a white windowless van, Johansson stealing a paralyzed woman's clothes in an endless white room, roving shots of average people on the street set to discordant music, the mere inexplicable nature of the black room, a shot of a victim deflating and floating around like a crumpled grocery sack and a thin red rectangle with copious amounts of mush sliding into it. In the handful of substantial dialogue scenes the lone relevant detail (at least as far as I can glean three viewings in) that supports the accepted understanding that our alien is only interested in harvesting lonely men for food- disregarding that it corresponds somewhat to the narrative of the book, and that Glazer has indicated that it is the case- is the indication that the men Our Alien protagonists chat up seem to be alone in their lives, a significant indication being made merely by a quick shot of Johansson casually speeding away as a bloke she attempts to lure is called to by another woman.
“It takes a visionary director to merge the sensibilities of a visceral genre film with the calm detachment and bold risks of a high art film, and Jonathan Glazer has been working towards this balance since his 2000 film, Sexy Beast, a film which also uses familiar genre posturing to create something more satisfying for its subtext (a relationship metaphor) than its 'heist thriller' elements, and through his even more confident, formally rigorous, and subtext-dependent 2004 film, Birth, a romantic mystery (I suppose you could call it) so cold and removed (by design) it might have given Kubrick the chills.
“In Under the Skin, Glazer has realized a balance between the thrilling, the intellectual, the observational, and the philosophical, all with the high-wire act of not compromising any one element for the sake of another. Glazer expertly structures a series of incidents and images into a meaningful and largely coherent whole and simply allows his audience to take all of it in, letting them put 1 and 1 together to figure out 2 -Billy Wilder would be proud- while throwing in some other numbers too (let’s move past those stunning black room sequences and all start talking about the three all white environments placed strategically throughout the film!) just to keep us in awe and make us appreciate him all the more.
“Mr. Glazer, please don't disappear for another 10 years. We’re all on your wavelength now, and we’re in desperate need of more filmmakers with as much faith in the power of the image and of our intelligence.” ~ Patrick Miller
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