Director Michael Winner provided one of the low points in ’70s cinema when he cast actual carnival sideshow performers to play the occupants of hell in The Sentinel. Contrast that with the appearance of actor Adam Pearson in Under the Skin, a film that, by any measure, provides us with one of the cinematic high points of 2014. Pearson’s face is, in reality, grossly contorted by neurofibromatosis, the same condition that turned John Merrick into the so-called Elephant Man. In Jonathan Glazer’s haunting, unforgettable sci-fi flick, Pearson is just one of the potential victims picked up by Laura, an alien in human skin who trawls through Glasgow in a white van looking for—well, you need to see the film, since words barely suffice. Laura is played by Scarlett Johansson. To quote director Glazer, her sequence with Pearson is “loaded”, to say the least.

“We wrote the scene to put her in the company of a human being who was very like her in the sense that they’re both as far outside society as you can get, really, for very different reasons,” he says, calling the Georgia Straight from London. “And I also think we wanted to put her in the company of someone we would judge in a way that she wouldn’t, and examine that. And I think there’s a tenderness in the scene. I hope it’s a very complex scene. I feel it is.”

The challenge, he admits, was calibrating something that tested the viewer but was sensitive to the actor. “I think that Adam would argue better than I would about it. I think Adam would say that to have used somebody wearing a prosthetic in that scene would have been an insult,” Glazer says. “The difficulty with it was to find Adam. But Adam put his hand up and said, ‘I want to do that, works for me, thank you very much.’ ” Pearson’s five minutes on-screen are among the most weirdly poignant in a film that massively favours tone over narrative, strives for (and achieves) a kind of dreadful beauty, and takes wild risks for its entire duration.

“I don’t feel like anything’s worth doing unless risks are being taken,” remarks the filmmaker, who had Johansson interact with the public in Glasgow while his production team caught the action with hidden cameras. Some of those “victims” are nonactors. Glazer is reluctant to say which ones, but says: “I think the fact that you’re asking me the question is a good sign.” Glazer took another substantial chance on soundtrack composer Mica Levi. She’d never scored a movie before, yet her contribution to Under the Skin is every bit as indelible (and unconventional) as the rest of the film. Further evidence, indeed, that Glazer—famed for Sexy Beast as well as classic videos such as Radiohead’s “Karma Police”—hit an intuitive and collaborative sweet spot this time around.

“The second I heard her music, I thought, ‘This is the one,’ ” he says. “What we needed to do was keep Mica as free as she could be to hear her voice. I knew that music would be the blood of the film. I wanted it to be undiluted, unmediated. She’s in the company of people who can guide her but at the same time let her be completely free. And that’s what we all do with each other.”

Georgia Straight, May 2014