I don't feel like getting depressed tonight

FACES (1968)

Alcohol, agent of chaos. A spree here and a spree there, and you could find yourself blundering around like George and Martha at a beer festival. To make matters worse, those riddled with suppressed emotions are likely to vent in the most irrational and unabashed manner. With Faces, John Cassavetes utilizes his individual brand of unorthodoxy to provide a social commentary on the upper-middle-class and the hardships faced when marriages hit the skids and that flame of passion finally burns out. So, Cassavetes' incentive? Booze? To a certain extent, but only as a conduit to trigger the film’s principal theme: the human condition.

In the spirit of Virginia Woolf and Days of Wine and Roses, the plot is influenced by alcoholism and regressive behavior, motifs Cassavetes powerfully applies to the film’s social atmosphere, but the big picture here – honest portrayals of the American middle-class – is only framed by these motifs. Quite atypical, but not uncommon in independent features, Faces lacks opening credits. Instead, Cassavetes decides to establish the film with an explanatory opening scene that introduces us to Richard Forst (John Marley), a bigwig financier who’s preparing to screen his latest investment. His colleagues pitch the presentation as “an impressionistic document that shocks” and “honest, but good”; spiel alluding to Cassavetes’ actual feature.

Told through Cassavetes’ cinema-verité-spyglass, Faces makes an effort to dispel the presence of actors and sets, creating the most kinetic environment possible by illustrating its characters as brutal proxies of society. On arrival at escort Jeannie’s (Gena Rowlands) home, Forst and college buddy Fred (Fred Draper) are clearly intoxicated. Jeannie, tipsy herself, guides the two drunkards into her humble abode for some lighthearted foolery; all unaware of the intense pathos soon to erupt. Another harsh episode of truth-bearing occurs when Forst returns home to his subservient wife (Lynn Carlin), who he drunkenly chit-chats with until the elephant in the room – sex – blows its trunk. This is the pattern for a good portion of the film – a bit of fun and games followed by an orgy of grueling misery – however, this “pattern” isn’t exactly standard throughout; the dialogue can be sporadic, whimsical, juvenile, and even deviate from the film’s objective at times, but it continues to ring true realistically.

From my experience with Cassavetes, he’s never been one to adhere to a tripartite structure. His films are "free-verse" in a sense. They come across as heavily improvised because his actors aren’t ball-and-chained down by a script; they’ve been granted the liberty to conduct their characters how they see fit. One to namedrop, Cassavetes references Ingmar Bergman in the film, who also shared a close bond with his actors, but what’s more intriguing is how Cassavetes studies his characters in a fashion similar to Bergman. Both directors have implemented tight, intimate camera techniques (close-ups, etc) in their films in order to “dissect” their characters, and considering that Faces is a critical reflection of our own social conditions, character analysis is imperative.

An ingenious auteur and master of the now prehistoric tools of classic cinema, Cassavetes delivers an aggressive response to the conventions of filmmaking. As a social document, the film virtually KOs our perception of a “level-headed” society, then peels off the layers of facades used to conceal the unpleasant facts we choose to ignore. Refusing to shy away from the film’s distressing themes, Cassavetes reminds us that suppressing anger and contempt is a human condition, and given the right catalyst, we are all vulnerable to emotional collapse.

8.5/10