The Face of Another

Teshigahara has never shied away from examining the more unsettling dimensions of human experience. With the trilogy of full-length collaborations with Kobo Abe, Teshigahara encapsulated the Kafkaesque hellishness of quotidian life, the yawning, gaping chasm of emptiness that lies beneath the veneer of stability.

The ubiquitous influence of the French absurdists/existentialists, Kafka and Dostoevsky looms large here- one is reminded most often of Sartre's "No Exit", R.D. Laing's "Knots" and Dostoevsky's "Crime And Punishment". Sartre, Laing and Abe all underline how little autonomy we really have over constituting our own identities- often, we may find that we exist only as beings-for-others, entirely 'encrusted' within personas not of our own making, but assigned to us. For Okuyama and the unnamed scarred woman, they are imprisoned in their vulgar corporeality. Met with revulsion everywhere, they come to accept ugliness as an indelible mark of their being. Trapped within the oppressive confines of flesh, they cannot evade the pity and repugnance that their countenances arouse. It is little wonder that Okuyama becomes self-lacerating and embittered.

Throughout the film, the viewer confronts how precarious identity truly is- the assumption that selves are continuous and linear from day-to-day rests entirely on the visage. The doctor's paroxysm of inspiration in the beer hall affords a glimpse into the anarchic potential of his terrible invention, one that would rend civilization asunder. Indeed, the final epiphany is particularly unnerving- "some masks come off, some don't". We all erect facades, smokescreens of self that we maintain with great effort.

Beneath the epidermis, as Okuyama discovers, is vacuity and nihility. This is likely the explanation for Okuyama's gratuitous, Raskolnikov-esquire acts of crime at the conclusion of the film- faced with the frontierless void of freedom, he desires to be apprehended and branded by society. Integration into society, after all, requires a socially-assigned, unified role, constituted by drivers licenses, serial numbers and criminal records. Without such things, Okuyama is a non-entity.

Aesthetically, the film exhibits all the rigour and poetry of Teshigahara's other work. Cocteau, Ernst and Duchamp, in particular, are notable wellsprings for the film's visual grammar. Literate, expressionistic and profoundly disorienting, this might be my favorite Teshigahara work.

Mr. Okuyama (Tatsuya Nakadai) is a physically and emotionally wounded man. After an industrial accident at work, his face has been scarred and mutilated beyond recognition, and even his wife rejects him, even though she says his physical appearance doesn't matter. It has left him bitter and angry, until his psychiatrist Dr. Hira (Mikijiro Hira) comes up with a way to fashion a 'face mask' that will give him the appearance of having a completely normal face, albeit with a few joining marks. Hira doesn't do this just out of kindness, he is fascinated how this new face will alter Okuyama's personality and way of life.

The Face of Another is a fascinating film that highlights the social attitudes to physical appearance. There are hundreds of films and morality tales that teach you that it is inner beauty that counts, and once you allow this to shine then your physical attractiveness becomes irrelevant. Everyone knows that this is bullshit, so its refreshing to see a film that makes it clear from the outset that physical appearance has a massive part to play in society. Okuyama's new face, which is an attractive one, changes him so much that he takes on an almost dual identity. Dr. Hira delights in telling him that he has bought flashy new clothes, something he was never concerned with before. It becomes clear that whilst before Okuyama merely wanted to be normal again and fit back in society, his new face is engulfing him, and to be 'normal' simply isn't enough anymore.

As with many of the Japanese New Wave film-makers of the 1960's-70's, director Hiroshi Teshigahara takes some bold steps and sneaks in some surrealist and art-house values in a movie that is otherwise played relatively straight. A 'fictional' character appears every now and then throughout (she is first imagined by Okuyama's wife as a character in a movie); one side of her face is scarred and burned. She appears quite rarely, but seems to serve as an alternative to Okuyama's increasingly vain soul. Another scene seems a ball of hair that floats in the air, unnoticed by the people in the laboratory. I have no idea what it meant, and couldn't really admit to it being wholly successful, but it certainly got my attention nonetheless.

A powerful, disturbing, and poignant drama/horror from the greatest era in Japanese cinema. The film seems all the more important now, 45 years on, in a world where a botox injection can be as easy as buying a pack of cigarettes, and where physical 'beauty' is less a bonus than a necessity.

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movie about self perception and the bond between the mind and the body...soundtrak really set the mood for the increasing horror in the story line. Nakadai downplays his role to give an overall flawless performance. Watch for some really good lines which will undoubtedly force the viewer to start thinking right away which may distract from the plot (but hey, it's an artsy masterpiece right?)...There is a lot of experimentation in the cinematography such as a door which opens and reveals a cluster of hair in ocean tides...this effect serves to foreshadow the action but may in the view of modern audiences comes across as trying TOO hard to be an art film. I left the movie still trying to link the two parallel story lines in the film and you may too...but don't worry you get two stories for the price of one...DO NOT watch this movie in the dark even though there is nothing VISUALLY terrifying it is still a great horror film...

After an industrial accident that leaves his face disfigured for life, Mr. Okuyama (Tatsuya Nakadai)begins to question the meaning of life and his own identity, should he keep working, will his disgusted wife ever sleep with him again. His psychotherapist offers him the chance to avail of an illegal medical practice that he has invented, it's a mask moulded from the face of another, that Okuyama can wear to live life a little more normally. The mask gives him a new lease of life, but his therapist warns him that the mask could take over and influence him to do evil things. As the mask takes control Okuyama can't resist but to give in to his baser instincts, his main plan being, to seduce own wife, that he believes may be cheating on him anyway. With thematic echoes of Franju's Les Yeux sans visage and even Delmer Daves Dark Passage, Teshigahara delivers his expressionistic adaptation of Kôbô Abe's novel with style, the results being a dark and epic tale that will haunt its viewers. Its full of inventive visuals and clever tricks with sound, which along with Tôru Takemitsu's superb score contribute wonderfully to the theme of how fragile identity really is and how the masks we all wear hide our true beings and souls. There's also a secondary story of an unnamed facially deformed girl, who is also struggling to cope with her disfigurements and her tragedy is equally moving.

I loved the premise, appreciated the philosophy, and enjoyed some of the avant-garde bits of filmmaking here, but I don't think this film quite lived up to its full potential, and it didn't fully connect with me.

From the start, there are existential themes of isolation and absurdity, and the man's condition reminded me of Gregor Samsa waking up and discovering he was a giant bug. With his face heavily bandaged, he's alienated from everyone around him, including his wife, who shrinks from his touch. The film explores identity, acceptance, and whether the mask or persona we adopt liberates or controls us. The minor parallel story of the young woman with the scar on her face also deals with a mask of sorts, and isolation.

Existentialism was common after WWII, and perhaps heightened in Japan by its having lost the war, and gone through more dramatic changes politically and psychologically. Maybe the young woman in the minor story, with burns apparently suffered in childhood at Nagasaki, is a symbol for the country's scars, and its identity fundamentally changing. Similarly, maybe the man losing his face from an accident at work is a symbol for the modern or corporate world changing us, as we work as cogs in a machine.

I loved to think about those things, but the film doesn't expand on them as profoundly as it could have. Instead of a character arc that shows some form of change in the man over time, it gives us mostly dialogue which doesn't land as philosophically as I think it was intended, and commits the sin of telling us instead of showing us in the process. The doctor gives us dire warnings about far more changes than we actually see. Having the man's primary focus be to seduce his wife while disguised in his new mask was unimaginative and uninspired, though I did like thinking about the irony of this being the opposite of love, which should involve an unmasking and getting to one another's 'true self.' There are also banal bits like women putting on make-up being yet another form of mask. As for the parallel story, with the incest, rising sun, and oblivion, I think there is symbolism and some level of desperation or despair here, but it's not strong, and narratively it probably should have been at least loosely integrated with the main story.

Overall though, the film is well worth seeing. The production value is high, with that ultra-cool doctor's office, and the assortment of creative visual tricks director Hiroshi Teshigahara gives us, including freeze frames and surreal imagery. The striking scene in the crowd towards the end is also fantastic, and the film's best. My favorite line to ponder was this one: "I wonder if we see the true face of a gem when it's polished, or in the rough."