Review of Faces (1968) by Justine S — 09 Jun 2009

Here's a phenomenon, a movie I pretty much couldn't take when I first saw it. And its not that it was too powerful or too disturbing or anything like that. The film was just downright frustrating. I look at the movie now, at all of John Cassavetes' masterpieces, and think to myself, 'we think we know what independent film is all about'. Truth be told, the independent movement has shaken up the movie world profoundly and I'm glad I was alive to witness the muted renaissance of it. But John Cassavetes, the grandfather of independent film, the man who unwittingly created the movement, is still miles ahead and I wasn't yet there when I saw 'Faces'. If 'A Woman Under the Influence' isn't his true masterpiece, 'Faces' is. And I think it is.

The movie is frustrating. It was intended to be. It is nearly incoherent at times. It was a film intended to look shitty. The 'plot' does indeed grind to a halt at times and we can hear the brakes squealing on the tracks when it happens. But I have found these aspects of the film to be some of its best aspects. What I think is coolest and most impressive about the film are its statements, which hold up today. The film was originally supposed to be called 'The Dinosaurs' since it is a summation of a mode of life that Cassavetes saw as having reached an evolutionary cul-de-sac. He hated the Moneymen, those who strove for a life controlled by the comfort of the buck and whose lives were hollow to the core. The film is about businessmen, whores, bored housewives and one young soul who seems to know what its all about. It takes place in one night where a couple, in the throes of a burgeoning divorce, seperate and spend the night with a group of other people. The man spends it with whores (one of whom he is deeply in love with) and men like himself, the woman spends it with wives and the young hipster. Nobody finds much solace and nothing is resolved but everyone creeps a little closer to knowing something profound about themselves, which is about as close as any of us get. It is a long nocturnal, booze-fueled slugging match of a movie, made even more gruelling than 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' because of how relentless, repetitive, and almost incoherent the film can become in comparison to the former film's wit and poetry. And 'Faces' seems perfectly comfortable with its insanity, which pretty much leaves the viewer alone to decipher it. Cassavetes never seemed to care about how an audience may have to endure his kind of filmmaking, and it is most certainly difficult to take in one, unbroken viewing. The characters we meet throughout this long night are pitiable, loud, abraisive and (eventually) excrutiatingly honest when cornered. There are long stretches of antagonistic dialogue, sniping and bitching. And then there are moments of soulful communication so revelatory, so tragically resigned to their knowledge of their sadness and loneliness, that the film transcends its rough edges almost magically. The human moments shine so brightly from this gritty, rough hewn black and white drama that it looks and feels like a dramatic 'Night of the Living Dead', and the scares are just as potent. The cumulative vision of the world being inhabitted here, completely unable to emotionally nurture the lost souls roaming its living rooms, business offices, bars and bedrooms is truly haunting.

The film taught me some crazy things about life, and I do think its coincidental that I stumbled upon the film, and all of Cassavetes' work, when I was resurfacing from the deterioration of a number of soured relationships. I don't find it coincidental that my frame of mind helped me understand the picture. 'Faces' taught me that maybe older women in their late sixties need sexual gratification. Maybe people will only ever be incredibly cruel assholes to those who will treat them with respect. Maybe life will be an endless struggle for connection. Maybe most people you meet will live and die without knowing who they are or what it was they really wanted.

It was also the first American film to show a couple discuss, and subsequently laugh themselves silly over, the subject of cunnilingus.

The film is like an attack with a dull knife.

And throughout the film, punctuating nearly every scene, is the haunting, almost frightening echo of empty, dry, silence-filling laughter.