On Wednesday I saw Facing Windows, which won the best film award at the Seattle International Film Festival this year. The movie had good acting and cinematography, but nothing that made it great. But it did have a lot of close-ups of faces, including an extreme close-up under the end credits. I love reading faces and trying to figure out what they reveal, and I thought Massimo Girotti, who played a forgetful old man in the film (and apparently passed away soon after), did a great job of getting across a lot in his facial expressions.
It's weird, though, because I feel like a still face in a good photo is often more interesting than an animated face in a film. Maybe it's because I need to think more to figure out what's going on with the person in the still? In any case, I hadn't heard of Henri Cartier-Bresson before this week, but it seems that he had a knack for capturing faces at revealing moments. I especially like this picture of Gandhi breaking a fast. The woman in the background looks relieved and happy, but afraid to be too exuberant and somehow upset Gandhi and make him change his mind. It would be cool to actually see prints of some of Cartier-Bresson's pictures instead of just web-friendly digital versions and catch more of the details.
3 comments:
re: faces, have you seen this article
http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_08_05_a_face.htm
What a fantastic article! It made me really want to learn these methods of more careful face-reading. I also think it provides a better explanation of why I find serious phone conversations so much less satisfying than face-to-face meetings. You'd think that most of the information in the conversation gets through on the phone, but in cases when you're really trying to read between the lines, the information lost in not seeing facial expressions (not just general emotional content, but facial "microexpressions" inflecting certain words) may make a large difference. Anyway, very cool stuff; thanks for sharing the article.
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