Directed by:
John CassavetesScreenplay:
John CassavetesCast:
John Marley, Gena Rowlands, Lynn Carlin, Seymour Cassel, Val Avery, Dorothy Gulliver, Christina Crawford, Darlene Conley, Joanne Moore Jordan, David Rowlands (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
John Cassavetes puts a disintegrating marriage under the microscope in the searing Faces. Shot in high-contrast 16 mm black and white, the film follows the futile attempts of the captain of industry Richard (John Marley) and his wife, Maria (Lynn Carlin), to escape the anguish of their empty relationship in the arms of others. Featuring astonishingly nervy performances from Marley, Carlin, and Cassavetes regulars Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel, Faces confronts modern alienation and the battle of the sexes with a brutal honesty and compassion rarely matched in cinema. (Criterion)
(more)Reviews (2)
Who else is better suited to capture the minutiae of American middle-class life than an American director who impressively utilizes zoom and details? It is only through the camera that we can see up close that the faces of the protagonists are just character masks, from which despair, futility, and bitterness shine through in sneaky glimpses. Laughter, which is just a sneer, is only a means to convince others and, above all, ourselves of something. Similarly, searching for salvation and forgetfulness in entertainment is futile for people who no longer know how to have fun, and therefore their parties end in the hangover of falsity. In that moment of realization that we ourselves did not believe in our own pose, that everything is really screwed up, that instead of being in a luxuriously equipped row house, I find myself at rock bottom, that moment when the non-diegetic music stops (and Cassavetes can do without it just fine), Cassavetes knows how to direct it like no one else.
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What I truly admire about this film is how Cassavetes worked with the actors and their performances. They are truly hard to believe and overall very good. Unfortunately, it's so intense – partly due to the camera focusing on close-ups of faces for most of the runtime, hence the title – that I found it uncomfortable to watch. And that pervasive laughter, which sounded fake to me the entire time, also contributed to it.
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