Wednesday, February 20, 2008
FACES
John Cassavetes' 1968 film Faces is a very different and new kind of film for that time period. It has a very minimal plot line, but that doesn't even matter because Cassavetes was trying to focus mostly on the interaction between genders. John Marley plays Richard Frost, an old man who leaves his wife for another woman. I sat there wondering when the movie was going to start taking off into the plot...and it never did, I soon realized this was the plot, them sitting around talking, having a good time, thrown in with some not so good times; all of this pretty much took place in one single room. However there was some more plot thrown in later on, Richard Frost's wife (now ex-wife) meets a younger fellow and starts a relationship with him. The story basically follows all of these love toils back and forth. I thought it was interesting that Cassavetes decided to steer clear from the plot almost as best he could, normally I like having a story to follow, but it was good for me to step outside the "norm" and watch something I might not on my own account.
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2 comments:
I generally think that movies without a straightforward plot are fairly boring, but I thought Cassavetes did a really nice job describing the character's subtle preferences and decisions without much dialog. It sounds like you were fairly bored through the movie, I think that is good to acknowledge, but I also thought it was a pretty interesting film. Although there might not have been a lot to visually experience during the film (like so many other genres try to capitalize on), I like that after the film was done I was definitely not done thinking about it.
It almost does seem as if Cassavetes was steering clear of a structured plot, or at least what we consider nowadays as a "plot". Although the movie was trying to represent a more realistic outlook on what relationships are ACTUALLY like instead of the sometimes melodramatic Hollywood-ized versions of "marriage", I definitely agree that Cassavetes' movies are acquired tastes. We are totally conditioned to a certain formula for movies and his take a while to get used to. Maybe we'll get there by the end of this director study?
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