The first time I watched Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Face of Another, a few years ago, I was intrigued, but I still settled on the conventional wisdom that it faltered a bit as a follow-up to the almost universally praised Woman in the Dunes. A hasty revisit this past summer, while I was in the midst of my blogging hiatus (but still making progress on my goal of watching all the Criterion films in chronological order of release), I have to admit, did little to alter my first impression. That was probably due to the fact that I was cramming in too many films in too short of a time, in that flush of liberation that I felt from the burden of responsibility to fully digest a film and then write about it, before moving on to the next one in my queue. But now that I'm back in the routine of gathering my thoughts on each film in order, watching them more carefully with the goal of composing a review in short order afterward, I must acknowledge the inadequacy of my initial assessment. This is a truly astonishing film, richly laden with all manner of praiseworthy components: fascinating set designs, striking visual compositions, profoundly provocative ideas, a surrealistic atmosphere suffused with the icy modernistic alienation that was just falling out of fashion at the time of the film's release but that still offers an incisive critique to those living in 2015.
Indeed, The Face of Another is probably as prescient in regard to our era as any film from 1966 could hope to be, as the concept of personal identity and our individual distinctiveness in the midst of mass society are in some ways more malleable and subject to personal customization than ever. But in other ways, we are more locked in and defined by external forces, through the power of digital record keeping and the apparatus of the security state than any prior generation. This is a movie that stirs up so many thoughts and questions, I'll try to address a few of them here (though I will leave a lot undiscussed, including the entire "film within a film" subplot involving the disfigured girl. I can get into that in the comments if anyone wants to follow up on it there.)
The basic questions being explored in The Face of Another concern the possibilities of making a mid-life switch, somehow exercising the privilege of separating ourselves from the baggage of our past while still continuing to enjoy the benefits of existence. In other words, all the relief and escape promised by an act of suicide without the permanent (and largely indeterminate) consequences of following through on that impulse. There must have been some kind of restless anxiety about this concern buzzing through the cinematic zeitgeist of 1966, as a couple of other films coming up soon on this blog, Seconds and Persona, also take on similar themes. To pursue this topic, the creative team of Teshigahara and novelist/screenwriter Kobo Abe devised the scenario of a relatively affluent industrial engineer named Okuyama who suffers horrible facial mutilations due to a lab accident and turns to an ingenious psychiatrist/plastic surgeon with a very loose standard of professional ethics. The two of them, in tandem with a similarly unscrupulous nurse, succeed in implanting a facial mask that conceals his injuries so accurately that no one interacting with him socially would ever guess that a gruesome visage lurks just a few millimeters below that smooth surface of manufactured skin. The fact that the mask bears the handsome features of Tatsuya Nakadai is just an added bonus. (I'm seriously stunned to contemplate that Nakadai had just wrapped up work on The Sword of Doom to take on this role, that is every bit as compelling and badass as the lethal samurai Ryunosuke, though it draws on an entirely different skill set of an actor's toolbox.)
The secrecy of this illicit experiment extends even to Okuyama's wife. The relationship between husband and wife has understandably been strained by his injuries, but it seems apparent that Okuyama is more eager to jump at this chance to create an independent life for himself than he is to work through this phase of shock and separation that the couple is going through. Far from being interested in some kind of reconciliation, the conversations between the patient and his psychiatrist indicate that Okuyama has been deeply unhappy with his lot in life long before the accident, and much of this dissatisfaction stems from a host of unsettled questions he has about his value and purpose as a human being. Afternoons spent in a German-style beer hall, in the midst of an unidentified Japanese metropolis, are filled with philosophical ruminations that are at once intelligently thought through even as they show signs of incipient megalomania. But that's not to say that Okuyama was psychologically unbalanced prior to suffering his wounds, not at all. I think Abe and Teshigahara are intimating that many of us experience a similar sense of existential discomfort and corrosive indifference as inhabitants of modern society. It's just his unprecedented opportunity to step out of the usual grind and take a fresh experimental look at the possibilities of a new and unfettered social presence that has brought Okuyama's latent grandiosity and narcissistic self-indulgence to the surface.
As the tormented soul behind the mask continues to apply his cynical hypothesis about what motivates people (by projecting his own paranoia and misanthropy onto others), he soon discovers that even the most brilliantly designed and flawlessly executed disguise can only conceal so much. Frustrated by his inability to fool a young cognitively impaired girl whose instincts are unfailing, Okuyama abandons any serious effort to construct a new and independent life for himself. Instead, he warps this unique opportunity into a mission of vengeance and entrapment as he sets out to seduce his wife - a test of her fidelity, in his mind, to see if she would remain true to her vows while she believes her husband to be away on an extended business trip. The outcome of this stunt goes about as badly for Okuyama as such a jealously small-minded and abusive prank deserves, leading the patient/victim to flail out in a final act of futile retaliation against the diabolical genius who led him down this path (and who seems oddly welcoming of his own sudden dispatch from this world.)
These are just a few of the ruminations that The Face of Another stirred up in me. I could probably go on longer but I'm really trying to keep these reviews short and to the point, without reiterating all of the fascinating details that are so thoroughly covered in James Quandt's exceptional written and video essays that accompany this disc as part of the Three Films by Hiroshi Teshigahara box set that Criterion issued in 2007. In them, Quandt expertly identifies the artistic and philosophical influences that informed the director and draws our eye to the marvelous variety of cinematic techniques used to tell this story in such a compelling and rewatchable manner. I have to give Quandt substantial credit for helping me connect a lot of dots so that I could more clearly recognize the brilliance of what I was taking in through my third (and most careful) viewing so far. Even more so than Pitfall and Woman in the Dunes (which I think has proved to be a more enduringly popular classic due to its ravishing erotic content and a more mythic and accessible story line), The Face of Another is a movie I would really love to see on the big screen. Short of that, I think this set really deserves a Blu-ray upgrade. It's already a beautiful package, but a reissue would get these films in front of an audience that I think would be very appreciative. Even though Teshigahara stuck with the old-fashioned 4:3 aspect ratio in making them, the three titles collected in this box still feel sharp and ahead of their time.
Next: Violence at Noon