Faces
June 16th 2008 08:47
John Cassavetes Faces
Faces Poster
A few weeks ago I discussed how Shadows was Cassavetes first and only film to be made so far by him in an entirely independent way. Even though we got a taste in Shadows, Faces is the first film where the explosiveness of spontaneity, embarrassment, uncontrollable outbursts and expressive volatility came to an operatic peak. We get to live through these peoples lives in a way that has really never been emulated since.
Two of the faces in Faces
Faces comes out of Cassavetes meditation on the most miserable period of his life, making studio films. Cassavetes found himself living his life as part of a culture of men who prided themselves on being bullies. The emptiness of these men’s lives extended to not only using money to stampede over whoever they could, but using money to conduct their most personal and romantic relations with women too. Cassavetes said he woke up one day and realized that he was living in this sub culture. People who made their lives about achievement only and the more unhappy they were the more they used their financial power and status to over-compensate.
If the main presence in Shadows was playfulness, then in Faces the main one is crisis. ‘Faces’ contains more laughter then I have seen in any other film, however, this is a laughter of complete denial, laughter of desperation, anxiety, hysterics, in fact every type of laughter except playfulness. Occasionally there will be laughter from characters that seem to come from playfulness, but it’s really coming from an utter fear of silence.
Now, contradictory to that, Faces is a surprisingly very funny film, a film where sleep walkers are slapped awake and forced to feel real emotions again, are caused to get in touch with everything that they think they don’t have anymore and everything that they stand to lose – in the case of these men, their marriages.
Here is a sample of the wit and humour in Faces
Near the beginning of the film we see three drunken adults, two of them middle aged men, acting like children. However, this is a far cry from Too Late Blues or Shadows, idealism has worn thin, sincerity has been fatigued, society and responsibility say that it is inappropriate for them to behave this way. It’s an embarrassing scene to watch as these two middle aged men become awfully catty, as they vie for the affection of a young prostitute they are spending the evening with. After one of these older men throw a tantrum that is the emotional equivalent of a ten year old, the party is broken up and the two men go home to their wives. Their wives being the other side of the coin. Cassavetes explores in a series of startling revelations these women and their feelings or in many cases their buried feeling concerning their husbands. Needless to say - affairs are rampant.
The film gains intensity when Richard Forst (played by John Marley) demands a divorce from his wife, Maria (Lynn Carlin, who was also nominated for an Oscar in the film, although talk of Oscar nominations in the context of this film is absolutely ludicrous). These two married people go out into a world where everything is exploding with change in the culture, the sexual revolution is occurring and the women in these marriages are stuck with the short end of the stick, in marriages with husbands they still love but have no idea how to express themselves. The men continue to chug along in the manner that they are used to, flashing their positions on the work chain as they see themselves being replaced by younger men with new ideals. Richard and Maria both search for a temporary fling that night to run away from the doom of their marriage and after one of the most powerful climaxes I have ever seen in any film, where the temperature goes beyond boiling, they still have to return to each other, figure out what they are doing and where they have gone wrong.
RICHARD FORST – “Do you want violence! You want me to be violent, is that it? Do you want me to slap you across the face every time you open your mouth?!”
The distorted Face of love
Something very interesting about Faces is that is seems to have been made in a way that consciously tries to avoid analysis. Everything about the way the film was made attempts to destroy everything we have traditionally looked at as cinematic shorthands for analysis eg. Expressive camera angles, mood music etc. The film demands that we take a more human approach to its experience. This will be the first Cassavetes film that feels like every element is stripped down to a rawness, where all we have are the people in them. Al Ruban’s high contrast, 16 mm, black and white cinematography helps achieve this as his camera zooms in a little too close to the actor and reveals all.
The biggest revelation in this film however is the acting, Faces set a new standard for spontaneity in film. The actor who steals the show in this department is Seymour Cassel (The Royal Tenenbaums, Convoy, The Last Tycoon, Dead Presidents etc.), who won the 1968 National Society of Film Critics award for best supporting actor and a 1969 Oscar nomination. Hands down, I believe this to be one of the greatest performances of all time as he plays ‘Chet’ a young, happy go lucky ladies man who has these house wives fighting over him as he attempts to make them lighten up a little. Gena Rowlands is also very strong in the film, although I think she does better work in Cassavetes later films.
A scene from the film with Seymour Cassel in full flight
The fact that so many critics thought that his films were improvised is only a credit to Cassavetes as a writer, what he is doing in terms of dramatic structure in this film is so fundamentally different to most films that it’s no surprise that the film is lost on many viewers. Faces is considered to possibly be the film that spawned the ground breaking American cinema of the seventies. It came out at a time when the studios where dying. Hollywood was continually losing money and while Robert Altman and Sydney Lumet were certainly pushing out regular films at that time, Faces is said to be the film that sparked and inspired the revolution of American films by Scorsese, Coppola, Hopper, Lucas and Friedkin and its mark can still be felt today in T.V. shows like ‘The Office’ and ‘The Sopranos’.
As you can tell, Faces is a film I have an extraordinary passion for and the making of it which took four years is even more extraordinary, it is one of the films that changed my life and it literally rewired my nervous system the first time I watched it. I will now conclude this review before all objectivity goes out the window. I will end by saying that if you are comfortable mainly with mainstream films Faces may very well confuse you a little, no wait, a lot, however, if you are a viewer who considers yourself to be open minded to different forms of cinema then you are in for a very powerful film about a culture of people who’s own wealth has absolutely swallowed them up and they have forgotten themselves in it.
Coming next week – the intensity of Faces tips over into the madness of ‘Husbands’
Watch the Faces Trailer
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