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Blanched abstractions in human form fill the opening, a fake hand floats in a tank and a finger is broken. "Recognize these?" X-ray on the disfigured protagonist gets a talking skull, Modern Man (Tatsuya Nakadai) as existential mummy, dangling cigarettes through bandages while yearning to pluck out humanity's collective eyeball. The Invisible Man plus Eyes Without a Face, the risky experiment is a skin veneer that allows the brooder to rejoin society's modernist surfaces, or rather escape them. The psychiatrist (Mikijiro Hira) fancies himself a visionary and enjoys the process as much as the patient, he replaces the melted visage with a new one, plays Mr. Potato Head with beards and mustaches, and finally coaxes a smile out of it. "A man without a face is free only when darkness rules the world." Hiroshi Teshigahara on the age of masks—who wears whom? The sculptor's mind at work in the doctor's chamber (anatomical lines on glass slats), the maiden voyage at the Germanic beer hall (circular pans punctuated by freeze-frames). The acid test for the disguised antihero is the "dangerous triangle" of seducing his own wife (Machiko Kyo), who reminds him of the importance of cosmetics in relationships. Isolation, identity, the lingering chill of Hiroshima. Across town, a parallel trauma: The scarred beauty (Miki Irie) with a premonition of another war, saluted by veterans at the mental institution and comforted not too wisely by the older brother. "The shape of the glove changes with the user," Kobo Abe's scenario builds toward the surge of featureless pedestrians in an excoriating image embraced by Von Trier's Antichrist. The camera at the close is a mirror, Miike in Ichi the Killer recalls the man with the half-peeled face. With Kyoko Kishida, Eiji Okada, Minoru Chiaki, Etsuko Ichihara and Kakuya Saeki. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |