Volti

This film is one of the supreme masterworks of all of American cinema. It is absolutely essential. Yes, it is "difficult." Yes, it is "slow." But those standards are for enterainment. Cassavetes wants to take us out of our ordinary ways of viewing. He wants to deny us the escapism of "entertainment." That's the point. If you have trouble with this film--good! If you find it infuriating--good! If you find it not entertaining--good! It wants to get under your skin. It wants to shake you up.

It is a deep exploration of manhood in America, of the power games that men play with women, and of the other kinds of games women victimize themselves with. Deeper than Citizen Kane, more abrasive than Magnolia or American Beauty, Faces turns the camera on the ordinary, everyday ways men and women treat each other. It wants to get under your skin, and if you allow it to, without giving up or shutting your mind to it, it will profoundly enlighten you.

I also want to highly recommend a stunning book about Cassavetes that makes a nice companion piece to a viewing of the film. Ray Carney's Cassavetes on Cassavetes book (or his web site devoted to Cassavetes) has almost 100 pages about the making of this film. Both throw more light on how Cassavetes got the amazingly intimate and exposed performances he did.

But trust me, this film can change your life. It is one of the greatest works of art in all of film. And the resistance it meets with is proof of it

When I began watching Faces, I realized that I never knew just when the present scene was going to end. I then realized that I wished that it would last forever. I found myself so engrossed in the scene that I was fascinated with it by itself. Then the next scene began, and the next scene, and within each one, there is a whole single movie with characters and a story arch. Faces is a film that does not allow any given scene to simply be a communication of plot information. Cassavetes created an entire universe for his actors in every scene. Each scene is a million years of passion spliced together, each demonstrating brazenly his brilliant recognition of human exchange and in conversation and conflict what is exchanged and what is left to be desired.

The film has moments of great pain because miniature struggles are so real and they tend to be vocalizations of a person's deeper fears in social interactions and in the structure of life. The film has scenes of furious drama because characters will experience blind unleashing of their ids as middle-aged people. Faces also delivers highly during moments of happiness and fun because, the situation's comfort level gracefully allowing, the characters will show the fieriest, grandiose, extroverted parts of themselves.

The movie's message, ironically, is not about the inner self and the unleashing of it but about the naiveté with which people carry out their normal married lives and don't care to face their flaws and problems and, though they gradually strip their personalities down bare throughout interactions, they continue not knowing themselves or each other. Faces is now among my favorite films of all time and places John Cassavetes on a pedestal as an idol of mine. The movie is a supreme demonstration of powerhouse acting, wherein each performance can be cherished by the performer with a feeling of ownership. There is a bit of real actor in each character played, and that can be seen in each and every powerhouse scene in a row.

This movie is the epitome of brilliantly dramatic character study: It's so phenomenal, watching it is excruciating. Cassavetes takes us deep inside the lives of a bored, shallow upper-middle-class couple, and as his skilled actors improvise remarkably realistic scenes, down to the smallest mannerism of their characters, Cassavetes forces us to watch every knife-twisting second. It's difficult: Rather than watching an unpleasant situation, then getting pulled away by an editor's cut, we have to sit through all 20 or 25 minutes of a scene that makes us squirm, whether it's a middle-aged man making an ass of himself to impress a young prostitute or his wife feigning laughter to make a young man think she's having fun with him. While not the best movie I've ever seen, it's unique: A great work to whose style nothing else compares.

I have only recently become acquainted with Cassavetes films and I am continually impressed. This film was made on a shoestring budget filming primarily at night because the actors had day jobs. The working title, I understand, was "Dinosaurs" which sums up things up nicely. This is an important film since it shows flawed human beings especially in a time that was truly in upheaval - the late `60's. But Cassavetes was already anticipating the attempt at overthrowing the status-quo. This is a hard but fascinating film to watch. The masks, the self-loathing, the fear, the confusion of intimacy, the now tired slogan of the war between the sexes with entertainment all driven by prescription pills, alcohol and cigarettes...it's all here. Is it "real" or is it "contrived"? Even a well acted scripted play still can penetrate us. The people and conversation "inane"? You bet. Go to work or a club and listen closely -- we live lives that should never be filmed. Cassavetes films as if he's eavesdropping. Lastly - I could not imagine this film or 'Shadows' in anything but b/w....even if he COULD have afforded color stock. Excellent film.

I see movies hoping that they're different. I've seen so many films that were exactly the same and that's really just a waste of time. Well, Faces is certainly different. It's hard to get through. It actually took me a week. That's because there is little action and it is hard to get interested in it. The reason why it's so original is because it is practcially a documentary on social life in this time period. It's as low budget as you get. Characters just hang around houses drinking and enjoying themselves. So I guess there isn't much of a plot, but on the good side this might be the most realistic movie I've ever seen. I really felt like nothing was unrealistic, not even a single one of the conversations. That's different. Most movies try to impress, but Faces tries to be natural. That doesn't make much sense because "natural" means you're not trying to do anything, you're just existing as you always do. Maybe that was how Faces was filmed. It definately feels natural and that's a big achievment.