Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara.
Starring Tatsuya Nakadai and Mikijiro Hira.
Starring Tatsuya Nakadai and Mikijiro Hira.
In a Nutshell: A man receives a lifelike mask and undergoes a personality change.
How much of our own selves are internal? Would we still be same person in a different exterior? The Face of Another, based on Kōbō Abe’s novel, confronts these questions within grim contemplation. Its main character is a businessman named Okuyama (Tatsuya Nakadai) whose face was horribly burned in an industrial accident. He seethes in bitterness as co-workers and his skittish wife (Machiko Kyō) try to distance themselves. Seeking professional help, he finds the office of the sinister Dr. Hira (Mikijiro Hira) who uses Okuyama to model a lifelike “mask” that hides his deformity. Okuyama’s new freedom allows him to commit crimes and frame his wife for adultery. Unable to forget the world that cast him aside, The Face of Another challenges Okuyama’s true identity as one of self or circumstance.
How much of our own selves are internal? Would we still be same person in a different exterior? The Face of Another, based on Kōbō Abe’s novel, confronts these questions within grim contemplation. Its main character is a businessman named Okuyama (Tatsuya Nakadai) whose face was horribly burned in an industrial accident. He seethes in bitterness as co-workers and his skittish wife (Machiko Kyō) try to distance themselves. Seeking professional help, he finds the office of the sinister Dr. Hira (Mikijiro Hira) who uses Okuyama to model a lifelike “mask” that hides his deformity. Okuyama’s new freedom allows him to commit crimes and frame his wife for adultery. Unable to forget the world that cast him aside, The Face of Another challenges Okuyama’s true identity as one of self or circumstance.
Hiroshi Teshigahara has a gracefully control over the film’s surreal tone. Lighting and mise-en-scène shift between shots, giving Okuyama’s world an irregular sensation. The frame’s changes convey shifting identities as Okuyama finds his freedom skewering his morality. Scenes of cities feel ghostly even when crowded. Some may find the scenes of Okuyama and Hira pondering the effects of their experiment to be cumbersome. Though enough of the film’s material evolves organically from Okuyama’s experiences to justify their talk. Their Faustian relationship builds to a chilling conclusion where both find freedom from the experiment.
A parallel story tells of a beautiful girl (Miki Irie) who was scarred from U.S. atomic bombs. She accepts her disfigurement, but the scars of war erode her sanity into tragedy. Japan was still recovering from Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the material’s conceptualization. Okuyama’s story works as an allegory to Japan’s wounded anger or of modern urban torment. One could recoil at the choice human nature takes when faced with no consequence, or find it hypothetical at its most extreme. Even if The Face of Another offers no answers, it explores its subject with fascination that will draw its viewer in. A minimalist beauty and uniquely constructed microcosm of its times.
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