Product: Faces [VHS] (1968)
Rating: 1.0
Well, it's a good idea for a movie...
I wanted to like John Cassavetes, I really did. I love the idea of total disregard for the system, complete focus on the actors (sloppy technicalities be damned), & being as intimate & realistic as possible. However, this requires realistic acting and likable characters. The acting, especially in the opening drinking scene, is HORRIBLE. No one acts like this when they're drunk; it's way too overdone, even for theater it would be overdone, & it's embarrassing to watch. These characters just talk & talk, going in circles: everybody's happy, then things get tense, then somebody tries to make a joke & everybody's happy again but not as happy as before. It's painfully transparent in every scene what Cassavetes is trying to say & where he's going, but it takes FOREVER to get there. I clocked the drinking scene at seventeen minutes. Even a well-written scene in a movie will get old at seventeen minutes, and this is not a well-written scene, it is seventeen minutes of bad acting and unknowable, unlikable characters talking in circles. "But people talk in circles in real life." I know people talk in circles in real life, but certain things in real life are just boring on the screen. And the laughing...the actors realized that people laugh a lot in conversation, so they laugh...a lot. I don't think I've ever seen a movie with so much laughing in it. This might have turned the movie into something very warm & personal, but these people laugh at the stupidest things -- nothing they laugh at is ever funny. This makes all the laughter seem forced, it makes the actors look bad, & it makes the characters look stupid. I'm sure there was a point in here about adultery and husband & wife relations, but it was lost on me in a flurry of bad acting & scenes that refused to end. I do appreciate what Cassavetes was trying to do & his influence on cinema. If it weren't for him, there would be none of the intimate, cut-to-the-bone scenes in 'Mean Streets' and 'Raging Bull.' But though I can appreciate it, I still can't bear to watch it.