There is a point near the end of John Cassavetes’ 1968 film Faces in which one character utters to another after a near death experience; “Honey, it’s absolutely ludicrous how mechanical a person can be”. This statement comes after two hours of witnessing exactly that, one display after another of fastidious observations of human attempts at interaction and connectedness in which the very processes of achieving such things come at a great personal sacrifice, and in the end never come at all. Each character in Faces is seeking an escape from the desperation and loneliness that pervades their day to day existence, yet none of them are able to do so. This is because of the very fact that the masks they have constructed to communicate themselves to others are anchors of their sadness, they have built their identities on a falseness of character. Try as they may to eradicate their emotional stalemate through incessant laughter and excessive alcohol consumption, it becomes impossible and results in a further retraction from the comfort of others.
Faces is about the breakdown of a marriage on the surface, but its real insight comes from showing us just how inherently alone we really are, even as we try so hard to convince ourselves otherwise. Richard Forst (John Marley) and Maria Forst (Lynn Carlin) are a married couple. After a drunken night with his friend Freddie (Fred Draper) and a potential love interest Jeannie (Gena Rowlands), Richard comes downstairs and claims he wants a divorce from his wife. That night both Richard and Maria solicit sexual encounters from others; Richard from Jeannie and Maria from a young alternative type named Chet (Seymour Cassel). The film consists entirely of a number of encounters between the couples and groups mentioned of which (apart from the ending sequences) everyone tells dirty jokes, laughs, dances and sings with the aid of copious amounts of alcohol. Their encounters are performative in nature (Cassavetes’ performances themselves are central to the film’s experience), as they constantly aim to distract and entertain one another in an effort to share a moment or get close to one another. It’s a film obsessed with performing, both in its construction and also the performance involved in every human interaction in general.
The film is called Faces for a reason. Cassavetes is constantly giving us intense close up images of the characters faces as they shift and change throughout the course of an evening or encounter. It is as if we can read the unmeasurable mood that pervades the room just by witnessing the minute contortions in these characters faces. In an early sequence when school friends Richard and Freddie are first meeting Jeannie the tone is playful yet awkward. They dance and sing as per usual, but the intensity of the framing of faces and bodies clashing off one another gives the impression of the volatility of the situation; it constantly feels as though any slip could crumble the apparently carefree and joyous evening. Of course it does, but to express in how it occurs would be to ruin the experience of feeling the inevitability of the wind changing direction in the room. Faces and performance communicate everything, and combined with the close proximity of the camera to the action at almost every second, the intensity of the intimacy becomes incredibly disturbed.
Not only is Faces concerned with the expressive nature of human faces in general, but it also interested in our other faces, the ones we show to others. Each of the characters in the film has built up personalities that they no longer have control over. In order to survive the intensely stressful nature of human interaction and the vulnerability involved they’ve made themselves up. The cracks in the masks are the laughter that goes on too long or the desire for physical relations over emotional ones. Alcohol drowns their sorrows, but it also comes to be a pathway of interaction to the point where they are unable to express themselves without it. Whilst the laughter and good times should be a point of vicarious enjoyment for the audience, what results is a sense of pity and fear. Pity for the circular nature of these characters dilemma and fear for the inevitable combustion of their states of being. Even as Faces concludes, and the characters are forced to attempt vulnerability, they still remain at a distance from one another. Cassavetes’ final image moves away from performance based evocation for a few minutes to give us a symbolic image that is as rich as it is subtly constructed. Richard and Maria sit on opposite ends of a staircase, each of them moving around or clambering over one another in complete silence. Never in the same spot at once and constantly becoming a roadblock for the other’s attempt to move forward. It’s a potent moment of frank insight that is rare to see. A blatant truth that we all know is there, but fail to acknowledge. In this way, Faces shows us the impossibility of ever being truly with another person; either physically or spiritually.
Written by Simon Di Berardino
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