Faces

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.

An old married man leaves his wife for a younger woman. Shortly after, his ex-wife also begins a relationship with a younger partner. The film follows their struggles to find love amongst each other.

This was one of the most influential films of the 1960s, if you consider how it inspired Robert Altman and Woody Allen, as well as employing Steven Spielberg as a production assistant while he was still making short films and had not yet broken into feature films.

How well the film has aged is debatable. While its influence is clear, the film itself is not necessarily the most fun. Some have called it "meandering", and it is hard to believe that at one point Cassavetes had a six-hour cut (allegedly).

I'm sorry. I can't quite say I LIKED this movie. But, if nothing else, I... appreciated it. NO ONE can accuse Cassavetes of being unoriginal in any aspect of the production. Every frame of the film is remarkably unconventional. And furthermore, the performances were so starkly real it makes the prospect that there even WAS a script seem impossible to me. Now, I don't know any back story about this movie, but I'm sure there had to have been some script involved somewhere. What I'm saying is that the way the actors played it, the lines seemed... unwriteable. It's as if we were watching a documentary, but one where we can be certain those involved didn't know they were being filmed.

Basically, except for the poor dubbing that makes literally MOST of the dialogue in the film incomprehensible, I can't say there's anything about any individual sequences in the film that I disliked. HOWEVER, what I did have a problem with is this: the vanguard style of filmmaking, the characters, the situations they are in, the dialogue (if you want to call it that): does it all really come together to SAY anything? I didn't come away with any kind of an interesting or coherent message from the film. Which is fine if the scenes flow nicely together, but they really don't. Each scene as an entity unto itself is wonderful, but their juxtaposition together gets especially tiresome. I mean, for roughly 80% of the film, ALL of the characters onscreen are inebriated. Now, this makes it extremely difficult to get to know the characters beyond their buffoonish drunken altar egoes. Maybe, that was the point. I don't know. What I do know is that Cassavetes stubbornly refuses to reveal to us anything that even approximately resembles, plot, forward motion, or even... any kind of... an event... a happening until the last twenty minutes of the film when some interesting stuff finally happens. And this definitely alienates most audiences. Do you want to know why this movie has such a high rating? Because the people that didn't like it left after twenty-forty minutes. I know in the theater that I saw it in (a student film organization that watches intellectually stimulating independent fare weekly with warm response), the crowd of twenty people had been reduced by the end of the film to me, the president of the club (who was reading), and one other guy (whom I have a suspicion, fell asleep during at least part of the film) in the theater. EVERYBODY else got frustrated. Draw your own conclusions.

This is obviously not your average, everyday movie. It's some thing you could only watch at an art-house theater, so clearly this movie is not for just everyone.

John Cassavetes was a sort of guerrilla film-maker. His movies never felt like it had any storyboards or were rehearsed in any way. There was never a pre-setup plan, concerning any of its camera-work or positions and the actors all also seemed to be ad-libbing at points. They were just simply shooting away, which gives the movie a very raw and authentic feeling. I think this is the foremost reason why people really like his movies. I myself can appreciate it but that doesn't mean I'm that fond or impressed with it as well.

No, it's not really an easy or pleasant movie to watch. It's because the story is not really following a clear main plot line and things just seem to happen very randomly. I just simply prefer a more clear and straightforward story, since it also seemed to me that because of Cassavetes' approach, some of the sequences seemed to go on for ever and often weren't making that much sense for the story either.

I can still understand the story and what Cassavetes was trying to do and tell with it. It's basically a look into married life and not about any of its peachy or happy aspects. But however, like I mentioned before, I would had been more taken by it and probably would had find the story to be a more interesting one, if it had a more straightforward story and approach to it.

But yet I never hated watching this movie either. I can still definitely appreciate the way it got made and also all of the actors were a joy to watch. The movie really has some fine actors in it and I was especially fond of John Marley's performance. It were however Lynn Carlin and Seymour Cassel who received an Oscar nomination for their roles in this move.

Actually it seems quite amazing to me how this movie managed to score 3 Oscar nominations, since it's such an artistic movie, that normally would hardly get ever noticed or recognized by any of the big award shows. It perhaps says something about the popularity or status of director and writer John Cassavetes at the time or how people looked at movies.

For most people this movie will probably be too tough to bite through, or it simply won't be interesting enough to sit through but there is still a large crowd for these sort of movies out there. So if it sounds like it's your thing, chances are you'll probably end up loving it.

7/10

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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