Popular reviews

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  Review by Robert Beksinski ★★★★★ 17

  This film, like few others have done, transcends the medium into pure unadulterated art. Every tiny minuscule detail of the movie is crafted particularly to fit the genius of Teshigahara. Nothing is left to chance and all orchestrated together to create something higher than cinema. This is the nature of how multi-faceted artist, renaissance man, and one of Japan's greatest directors Hiroshi Teshigahara operates in his insane creative process.

  Exaggerations are well left behind, this film is meticulously designed to everything that the frame contains. The famous psychiatrist office for example, was completely designed, sculpted and decorated by a architect colleague of Teshigahara. The metallic sculptures of ears and modernistic setting with Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man and medical graphs drawn…

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  Review by Dirk Diggler ★★★★★

  Civilization demands light, even at night. But a man without a face is free only when darkness rules the world

  The Face of Another is a highly symbolic and terrifically engrossing, unsettling, philosophical and beautiful psychological thriller delving into thought-provoking themes of self-perception, identity, freedom, loneliness, and more. Similar in premise and concept to the great Eyes Without a Face, but I think the execution is even better and the themes more potently explored here. The ending completes the film in the most chilling way. Another surreal masterpiece by Teshigahara.

  Some masks come off, some don't

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  Review by braden ★★★★

  “Inferiority complexes dig holes in the psyche, and I fill them in.”

  Hiroshi Teshigahara’s dissection of identity The Face of Another is a creepy and compelling psychological thriller that follows a disfigured man who grows detached from himself when given a chance at a new persona. Much of the film is densely layered with blatant symbolism and imagery that is appropriately direct and forthright; using these intentionally obvious pictures of duality in framing and narrative to unmask the constantly hidden protagonist’s diminishing sense of self and swelling insecurities as the distance between his external and internal worlds drift further apart. It’s themes are clear but explored ingeniously with a style that lends itself powerfully to the messages, effectively immersing you into its chilling existential nightmare.

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ★★★★★ 11

  Questions arise endlessly and circle around one topic: what is the definition of self-perception? Its implications unleash an indefinite number of existential possibilities. Teshigahara's last experimental offering is an unparalleled work of art, regarded by many to be "pretentious" in its artsy imagery. Oh, people, if you could just wake up, open your eyes and see the film as the brilliant satire it is. "A satire of what", I hear you say? This treats the individual's absolutely atrocious dependence towards a visual image and a physical appearance to display personality and behavioral patterns in order to be "unique". This statement, however, gives birth to two ironic, factual contradictions:

  1) We are all unique by definition, regardless of your beliefs.
  2)…

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  Review by spap1 ★★★★½ 8

  oh my god. another film where i’m a bit lost for words… this review is going to take a long time to write. 

  i don’t think i’ve ever seen a film quite like this, although it bares similarities to Jekyll and Hyde.

  ….

  what if, even under the freedom of a new persona, the world remained as it had always been?

  anyone would be lying if they said they’d never thought about what their lives would be if they were able to be ‘someone else for a day’ or just someone else entirely, but they had never ventured beyond the possibilities of such a thing, or perhaps even the consequences of it. 

  it would unlock a world where you may…

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  Review by C4rlo5 ★★★★

  “You can’t save something that is already dead.”
  
  What is beauty? What is love? How does a monster look like? Do we try to look good for us or for the others?

  Well, here you have a movie to reflect about life, about stereotypes, about ways of acting, feelings and a big dose of pure reality.

  You can find this movie on YouTube, I leave you the link here, it has English subtitles.

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  Review by reibureibu ★★★★★ 10

  There are two things that we accept: 1. that we are all individuals, and 2. we are all influenced and perceived by outside forces. These are also two statements that conflict, in that we shape how others see our identity by shaping how others see us; visual identifiers become symbols become shortcuts for traits and characteristics, become an immediate way of changing personas.

  This is easily seen through how we personalize a singular aesthetic: whether it's temporary extensions such as accessories and piercings, or more permanent ones through ink or injury, we find ways of configuring our own individuality through both conscious and unconscious visual additions. These all then become flesh, our flesh, flesh that is made manifest.

  So in…

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  Review by {Todd} ★★★ 2

  "I thought you'd be impressed" -Someone,

  - Film Club Ranked: boxd.it/3M2sq

  It's like who are any of us really... know what I'm saying?

  The Face of Another is an excellent film about identity struggle and conflict. It is beautifully shot and executed with great performances and a wonderful score. Some of the visuals are really breathtaking.... I just wished I liked it more than I did. Something didn't connect for me about the heavy-handedness of the message and so what I can tell is a great film was just okay for me... and at times a bit tedious to get through. I'm probably just dumb.

  I recommend it to cinephiles everywhere because I'm probably very wrong on this one and need to rewatch at some point.

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  Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★★ 5

  Nothing is more real than the masks we make to show each other who we really are.

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  Review by Jerry McGlothlin ★★★★½ 11

  Your identity is what makes you who you are, but what is it exactly that separates one person from the next? In The Face of Another, Japanese cinema pioneer Hiroshi Teshigahara poses the question; if you had the choice to have any face and accompanying personality that you wanted, would you take it? If so, what would you do? Okuyama is an engineer who, after being involved in an industrial accident at work leaving his face severely burned and deformed, covers his grisly malformations completely in bandages and harbors great contempt for the world and a personal resentment towards his wife, who he believes has fallen out of love with him due to the results of his accident. One day, at…

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  Review by Branson Reese 3

  Torn because on the one hand I want to talk about how this movie has some all-time surreal images that I’ve ever seen on film and a number of shots that are tormenting me as I clutch the side of my head trying to figure out how they did it. But on the other hand I think it’s so funny to give a guy a brand new face and -with an almost limitless supply of faces at your disposal- settle on “beat poet with a beard that looks like he’s drinking it through the sides of his mouth” that ends up making him into a horny freak.

  Guess I’ll just walk the lonely third path and say: this movie is freaky in many ways, all of them cool.

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  Review by Graham ★★★★★ 3

  "There are monsters who act like people, and people who act like monsters."
  - Mr. Okuyama

  Ain't that the truth.

  As I watched this 60's dramatic sci-fi classic, it reminded me of so many other films with similar themes. A theme where an individual begins to lose their inner identity as a result of having their outer layer critically damaged. Films like Almodovar's sensual 'The Skin I Live In', Alejandro Amenábar's stunning 'Open your Eyes', Georges Franju’s chillingly creepy 'Eyes Without a Face' and more recently John Woo's rather spectacular 'Face/Off'. So it seems that this whole face transplant thing is an ongoing sub-genre in its own right, and there are some great films that live inside it.

  The Face…