Directed and Produced by Hiroshi Teshigahara
Screenplay by Kobo Abe, based on his original novel
Music by Toru Takemitsu
Sound by Junosuke Okuyama
Cinematography by Hiroshi Segawa
Lighting by Mitsuo Kume
Art Direction by Arata Isozaki and Masao Yamazaki
Set Decoration by Kenichiro Yamamoto
Edited by Yoshi Sughihara
Still Photography by Yasuhiro Yoshioka
Sculptures by Tomio Miki
Titles Designed by Kiyoshi Awazu
Starring
Tatsuya Nakadai as Mr. Okuyama
Machiko Kyo as Mrs. Okuyama
Mikijiro Hira as Psychiatrist
Kyoko Kishida as Nurse
Miki Irie as Radiation Scarred Girl
Bibari Maeda as Beer Hall Singer
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"Is it my true self that's getting drunk, or the mask?"
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Review by William D. Tucker.
Mr. Okuyama lost his face in an explosion in a factory. This is one of those things that wasn't supposed to happen. It's not like he worked there on the regular, y'know-he was an at-a-distance supervisor. Mr. Okuyama spent most of his days in cushy, modish 1960s offices, smoking cigarettes, perhaps complaining about how much time and money his wife spends on her gem-polishing classes, occasionally flirting with the beautiful young female secretary, and, oh yeah, doing some actual work, now and again? I assume he met with buyers, and took down orders, and then the drudges on the factory floor executed the dictates from home office. But, there comes a time when management must venture out among the worker drones and BOOM! Mr. Okuyama loses his face.
Mr. Okuyama is first seen in an X-ray camera view-he's nothing more than an eerie talking skull. He numbly describes how and why he ended up in the factory on that fateful day. He's full of irrational guilt-the explosion came about because of a technical error, a fuck-up-and yet Mr. Okuyama invokes his "technical background" as though that should've been a mystical ward against harm. He put in the years. He paid his dues. Nothing bad was ever supposed to happen to him, certainly not on the job. Certainly nothing so . . . random . . . so . . . unplanned . . .
Mr. Okuyama is speaking, as it turns out, not to We the Audience, but to a Psychiatrist who specializes in replacing lost and/or mangled body parts and skin tissues with artificial replicas. This Psychiatrist has seemingly taken on the task of bridging the perceived gap between mind and body, which is pretty damn progressive, I think, moving beyond the internal fantasias of Freud and Jung, and engaging with people as they are-as bodies in time and space.
But, alas, this is a movie, which means our Psychiatrist must be some kind of a Frankenstein, and therefore obsessed with bizarre and taboo projects that go beyond the norms and ethics of medicine. I mean, if this was just a straightforward saga of healing and making one whole and resilient, would we watch? Would we care? I probably wouldn't, if you must know, and what does that say about me?
William gasps, and takes up a cat o' nine tails-the old naval whip-to flagellate himself for his perversity.
Our Psychiatrist sees in Mr. Okuyama a suitable test subject for a new way of life. Mr. Okuyama is obviously traumatized by his experiences and therefore justifiably angry and hurt and lost. But our Psychiatrist also detects a discontent that goes back well before the accident and begins to finesse the faceless man towards a radical form of therapy.
Of course, our Psychiatrist offers pro forma hand-wringing about "ethics" and "potential dangers," but this is all calculated to push the macho, hard-driving Okuyama into taking a plunge. Once Okuyama agrees, our Psychiatrist blithely drops all reservations and gets to work.
Our Psychiatrist constructs a new face for Mr. Okuyama out of an advanced form of rubbery plastic that can function as a skin analog. This New Face shall enable Mr. Okuyama to become a New Man and thereby lead a New Life.
Which is terrific, right! Especially for the 1960s.
If this were a comic book or a TV show-as opposed to an adaptation of a rigorously deranged Kobo Abe novel-this new putty face technology would allow Mr. Okuyama to become a master of disguise and fight gangsters and solve crimes and shit.
But because this is indeed an adaptation of a rigorously deranged Kobo Abe novel . . . that's not how it goes down.
What our Psychiatrist is after is satisfaction for his own curiosity: what if you give someone a face that they can put on and take off like a hat, a coat, a scarf, a pair of pants, what happens when we can do that? Hmm? What happens when you enable someone to put on identity like you put on your clothes in the morning or take 'em off in the evening?
How does that play out?
Well . . . it depends on the quality of the removable face . . . and it depends on the nature of the test subject doesn't it? If the face is convincing enough . . . and if the person wearing it commits to that New Face . . .
. . . well . . .
Of course, Mr. Okuyama is a Frankenstein's Creature to some degree. But not absolutely. Yes, our Psychiatrist pushes him down a strange path, but our defaced industrialist is a bit of a self-aware monster, as it turns out. The tense domestic conversations between Mr. and Mrs. Okuyama consist of terror and philosophy like something out of Edward Albee directed by Roger Corman. It becomes clear that Mr. Okuyama has a grotesque and toxic sense of entitlement over his wife's mind and body, and proceeds to use the New Face to assume a New Self and thereby seduce her as though they are strangers all over again.
But maybe they were strangers all along. Yes, this is one of those movies that sees husband-and-wife shit as a form of social theater, and I tend to agree, but I imagine it won't sit too well with the "family values" crowd, but whatever does with those folks, y'know?
Mr. Okuyama uses his New Face to set up a double life. He approaches people who have met him before and dares them to see through his mask. There is a dizziness which comes with this freedom. And a giddiness which our Psychiatrist shares, as these two men hang out in a German beer hall-I guess this is to Japan what phony "Irish" pubs are to America-and plotting a brave new world where we will all become as strangers to one another and fly free of social gravity, and mold our fates as we mold our New Faces of Putty-
Honestly, this should all be a lot of fun, right? But I think our Psychiatrist picked the wrong test subject, and, also, I think, if you really pay attention, our Psychiatrist is also an insincere asshole who gets off on screwing with his subject, but doesn't want to be on the hook when it all goes bad. We come to find out that our Psychiatrist-who is charming as fuck it must be said-is leading his own double life by cheating on his wife with his loyal nurse assistant. It's one of those infidelities that happens basically in the light of day. Our Psychiatrist is a successful man and therefore he gets to fuck around on his wife with no real consequences. And no mask required!
Mr. Okuyama is, essentially, getting his wife to cheat on him . . . with himself. Although-because this is a Kobo Abe story-the question arises: if a relationship is fraudulent, and loveless . . aren't we always fucking around with a stranger . . . just one we happened to be chained to by marriage?
Maybe, just maybe, going to the extra effort of putting on a mask actually just affirms what we already know: that life is already a form of social theater, and we are different people in different contexts/relationships, and our troubles grow from rigid adherence to roles we either choose or are imposed upon us.
Meanwhile . . . there's another thread involving a young woman with a radiation scarred face. She's sexually harassed by young men in the street who don't see her scars at first, and then express revulsion when they do. This young woman works as a volunteer at a psychiatric hospital for World War II veterans. As she arrives at the hospital we see men muttering to themselves and in catatonic states and we hear the manic, barking voice of Hitler on the sound mix. Perhaps some of these insane soldiers think Uncle Adolf is still transmitting orders to their brains. A group of men play an open-ended baseball game that gets interrupted by hallucinatory air raids and phantasmagorical confusions about who's higher on the chain-of-command-basically, a super-fucked-up version of The Sandlot.
The scarred young woman does laundry for these damaged souls, and, for her trouble, one of the old soldiers tries to rape her. She's able to get away, even as we hear Hitler barking away again on the sound mix.
I find these scenes to be the darkest in the whole movie. They seem to depict the madness of war and fascism-the obsession with rigid roles, and hierarchies and the resort to force-and link it to a terrifying misogyny. You hear the voice of Hitler as a Japanese soldier attempts to rape a woman who tries to show compassion and bring comfort to troubled souls, for Christ's sakes!
Yeah . . . maybe this situation goes deeper than the "talking cure" can touch.
And these scenes lend a creepiness to the tacky German beer hall bits . . .aren't Mr. Okuyama and our Psychiatrist plotting their own kind of "putsch?" Sure, sure, it could just be a couple of entitled men getting deep up their own asses as they toss back too much beer, and dose themselves with a little morphine from the secure cabinet . . . but they do see themselves as superior. And they ultimately have a vision of all people as infinitely malleable and carried along by fashion and social pressures and fate . . . why not use these insights to live as you please?
The entire world was convulsed by war not so long ago. Japan's rulers led the nation down a road of empire and humiliating defeat. Unspeakable savagery practiced by those who claimed supremacy over all others. The slaughter was incalculable. Japan was firebombed and nuked without mercy when they refused to surrender. Entire families and cities and histories obliterated. Not so long ago.
And now-1966-Japan finds itself between the nuclear powers of USA and USSR. US military bases on Japanese soil launch aggression against Vietnam. The whole situation could spark off into global nuclear armageddon.
So why cling to a past or even your own face? Especially when the same old savagery wells up out of the abyss of the human heart over and over again.
Yesterday's Righteous Victors . . . Today's Villains . . . and what will Tomorrow bring?
In the German beer hall, a beautiful woman sings of a stranger she sees in the fog. Is this stranger a lover from the past? Jack the Ripper? A new dictator? A colleague from work? Godzilla? A new friend? An old friend? A drunk?
Later, our Psychiatrist and Mr. Okuyama have a seemingly shared vision of a crowd of their fellow citizens exiting a movie theater with bizarre faces of clay.
Do they see the truth, or is this their warped vision?
Or is it the common perception, clarified?
Maybe, our Psychiatrist and Mr. Okuyama had to take the long way round to realize what everyone sorta already knew but tried so very hard to forget.
