Review/Critique: The Face of Another

The Face of Another

Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara

Review/Critique: Of all the pieces of media I've consumed over the year, not one has been as hard for me to comment on as The Face of Another. I've been dreading making this review, as I honestly don't know exactly how to comment on a movie as weird or different as this one is. If I had to categorize it I would say it's a drama, but even then that categorization feels wrong. It's somewhere between Horror, Drama, and Mystery. The mystery element thrown in there because trying to figure out what the fuck is going to happen or at what pace would require you to invite over a team of trained detectives. This isn't to say there's no consistency to the film at all, just that it follows its main story thread so infrequently and at such a bizarre pace that it's hard to know exactly what's going on and how each scene is relevant to the main themes or story. Overall though I'd say that the movie was an enjoyable experience, albeit a really strange and out there one.

         I think almost every bizarre part about The Face of Another can be explained simply by saying "this movie is fuckin old and Japanese". I thought it was pretty funny at times how similar the story telling is in this movie in comparison to other pieces of modern Japanese media I've seen. The themes and symbolism are very over the top, everybody speaks like they're writing a philosophy thesis, and every character acts like anything slightly profound has completely turned their world view on its head. It's like a really long poetry battle between two parties trying to one up the other where the loser has their mind sent to the shadow realm. It doesn't help that in addition to this, the pacing in this movie is nonexistent. I think it's probably a factor of the film being rather old, but there are absolutely no standard beats in the entire movie. It's almost impossible to figure out how long each scene is going to go on for. Many important scenes feel rushed while a completely irrelevant scenes just drag on and on. Normally I would groan, but honestly it was kind of cool to see the movies take on pacing. Older movies have a much smaller catalog of conventions to refer back to, which leads to some really interesting and fresh takes on standard movie structure. I have to admit though that some scenes had me dying thinking they would never end, and while I can handle that infrequently, I will say I'd probably go insane if every movie was like this. When combined, these two factors make for one of the trippiest movies I have ever seen. Normally that's a positive attribute for me, but unfortunately a lot of the time I think it was trippy in a negative way. I normally love slower movies, but that's usually because their slow nature is deliberate. In this movie, deliberate and pacing sit at opposite ends of the table and neither one gets to leave until they eat their fucking green beans. It's hard for me to say the movie was a negative experience overall though, since it also did some really cool things. When the pacing was good and the dialogue was appropriately deep, the movie was fucking fantastically spooky and thought provoking. Some of the imagery is downright haunting, and the story line itself is very engaging. When it's at its best, The Face of Another is fantastically intriguing. When it's at its worst its at the very least conventionally different which is fun to pick apart in its own way.

Recommendation: Honestly although I like the film overall, its hard for me to give it a solid recommendation. It's really slow, really weird, and really fuckin old. If you like older movies or are a pretty big film buff, it's definitely something that's worth checking out. If not, I think I've illustrated pretty well if it's something you'd enjoy. I hope you do watch it though, because it's definitely a movie that's more fun to talk about with friends than it is to watch alone and never touch again.

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And that's my review of The Face of Another! My next review of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde will be released shortly.

Until then!