Where I Get to the Bottom of My Dislike of John Cassevetes (Director): Faces

My plan was to write reviews of all the movies I watched for the first time. This was going to replace the Netflix Round-up which was always a struggle since it was sometimes two weeks since I'd seen the earliest films. I quickly discovered that not every movie cries out for lengthy comment. I've already skipped over a Harold Lloyd collection (whose persona I really like, but whose films run hot and cold from scene to scene), In the Soup (which stars Steve Buscemi and is one of those wank-fests about being an artist and making movies [though heightened] which Buscemi did better years later in Living in Oblivion), and Army of Shadows (which is a good Jean-Pierre Melville movie that I couldn't come up with an interesting angle to write about). All this is to say that I'm only going to write about things that draw something out of me during the viewing experience. It's only natural that a film by John Cassevetes, whose films I've spoken of before, gives me something to say.

The films in question is Faces (a film that has caused a former professor of mine some stress) and it helped me finally pinpoint what it is about Cassevetes' directorial work that I find so off-putting. I used to think that it was the intimacy and intensity of the personal drama unspooling on screen. Additionally, the films were largely aimless. There's no driving plot. Everything is about the characters and the minute and/or significant changes that happen in each scene or throughout the film. Often, the characters are dealing with their lives falling apart. I always thought it was my inability to empathize with these heightened emotions and, to my mind, the ridiculous and unproductive conflicts that stemmed from the emotions. The answer is so much simpler: I hate the characters in John Cassevetes' films.

It's very possible that social gatherings were very much as Cassevetes depicts in his films at the time he shot them, or that these gatherings were indicative of what life was like amongst the creative, artistic crowd, but they seem like all the most annoying nights of my life rolled into one. Everyone is fighting for attention, dancing and singing ridiculous songs, drinking too much, and being generally disingenuous (this last "criticism" is probably the point of many of these scenes to show that these seemingly "happy" people are pretty miserable in later scenes. It doesn't change the fact that I find their overcompensation tiresome and irritating and only serves to fuel my disdain for the characters). I acknowledge that my description of these parties probably doesn't sound so bad, but watching it is excruciating, especially since the scenes always go on for... ev... er.

Faces opens with two men at a prostitute's apartment acting the fool. Things get heated between the prostitute and one of the men, so the other, Richard, steps in and the night ends abruptly, but not before a big kiss for Richard. Richard goes home to his wife, Maria, and they seem to have legitimate affection for each other, except that Richard exhibits a brutal contempt and disrespect for his wife (men do not come off well in this film). This is the only legitimately moving part of Faces for me and it gave me hope that I would finally connect with Cassevetes approach. But while the moment is affecting, it doesn't hold much weight because all we know about Richard is that he spent a night with a prostitute. We have a sense of the conflict that lies within his marriage, but that stems more from him being an ass. Richard just comes as fickle. I acknowledge that that's not necessarily a bad thing for the character, but for me, it removes me from any investment in the character's journey after he asks for a divorce. If Richard's contempt for his wife didn't seem to come from out of no where, the scene would be a lot stronger.



I don't mean to suggest that characters in films need to be likable or relatable, but one should understand their actions. Faces exemplifies my issues with Cassevetes' work as a whole. Where others see raw emotion on screen (and the performances he get are almost always uniformly powerful), I see unmotivated conflict. That there are deeper wounds that the audience isn't privy to. The audience shouldn't have to supply their own narrative in order to makes sense of character's actions.

And yes, the characters are all loud, obnoxious, selfish assholes.