The idea of the face as the focus of identity is one that is pervasive. As a species we are programmed genetically for facial recognition, and the face seems to be the chief medium whereby we read the interiority (the identity) of the others whom we encounter. We find comfort in the detection of a familiar pattern, even though there is nothing intrinsically truthful about the face. In a sense, one can understand the ancient Greek impulse to rely on stylized masks in their drama to portray emotions and states, and not on the feigned realism of a face that is just another emblem of a changing reality, one that all too often misleads.
In this case, the chief character is one who finds himself facing a profound psychological crisis as he reflect on what it means not to have a face any longer. It isn't necessarily that he is lacking in a mouth or nose or lips or ears, it is only that he has been horribly disfigured and can no longer aspire to the anonymity that any typical individual enjoys when venturing out into a crowd. His disfigurement is such that he must need wrap his head in bandanges in order to venture out, thus drawing attention to the full scope of his tragic situation. He will be going through a pretense of interacting with others and continuing with a normal routine that is abundantly evident to him by the nature of the reactions that he provokes. Everyone seems to evade his look, and they become glum or unnaturally cheerful, patronizing or sympathic, refusing to say what they must undoubtedly feel: repulsion and fear. He has become hidden under the swathe of bandages, and he is thus a figure of pity as well as a threat.
He undertakes to acquire a new "face" by visiting a doctor who proceeds to manufacture one for him. This doctor seems all too easily seduced by the prospect of working with such a patient, for he is a psychologist who is furthermore given to philosophy. He recognizes this as a unique opportunity to test out his theories about social bonding and about how identity is, ultimately, an ephemeral characteristic. Everything is flux, and thus identity is momentarily stabilized precisely by the assumption of masks, those masks that escape detection but that are nonetheless pervasive. This mask implies a role, and the mask will dictate changes in the character of his patient. After all, the "ghost", so to speak, is in need of a material medium.
After manufacturing this mask, we do indeed see these changes manifest themselves in the protagonist. He is, if anything, more alienated than before, and we see this as well in the way the lighting of the film evolves. It seems now to take a stage-like character in which spotlights seem to pick out the character and follow him, and in which the we see this hidden dynamic of removal as well as assumption. The character supposedly will undertake a trip away from his home, but will instead rent an apartment, and he will venture in and out in excursions in which he assumes his mask and becomes ever more frenetic and unrestrained in his actions. The mask is removable and, after all, the parable at the heart of this story is that ethics as well as identity are also similarly assumed qualities, a currency of exchange that is rootless in the same way that he has become.
It is inevitable that he will succumb to violent impulses, for he feels the growing power of artifice, of the mask that takes over his life, as the psychologist predicted it would. It leads to self-destructive impulses, for it is leading to a frenetic search for constancy and moral grounding, and when he proceeds to "seduce" his wife using his new guise, he crosses a boundary that she is unable to accept.
It is notable as well that there is another secondary story in this movie, an episode involving a woman who is horribly disfigured in half of her face, and thus presents a Janus visage to the world. She is both unbearably beautiful (on her unblemished side) as well as horribly ugly, and she is also struggling to maintain a fixed social role in her society. In the end, she will seduce her brother and drive him to torment, while giving in as well to her self-destructive impulses as she submerges herself in the ocean in the final scene of the film.
The film, thus, constitutes an investigation character, ethics and the illusion of identity. Are we indeed condemned to a mask-like identity, without any hope of being able to express what we would like to imagine is a stable, authentic self? The self has been under attack during much of the 20th century, after all, with the rise of psychoanalysis, structuralism, communism and narrative theory, among many other schools of thought, but in this film we see what would seem to be a parable of despair, in which the characters seem to implode as they reflect the emptiness and the violence that they seem, incomprehensibly, to harbor. It feels like a very modern film despite the fact that it was released over forty years ago, and it reflects many of the anxieties of our modern age.
After all, who can stand to look at their reflection in the mirror for more than a few minutes before feeling an asfixiating sense of bewilderment and estrangement?
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment