A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality.A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality.A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality.
- Awards
- 2 wins
Robert Dunham
- Foreign man in Bar
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDirector Hiroshi Teshigahara said that he intended the film to explore both personal and cultural identities. While the examination of personal identity is quite overt, Teshigahara also explored how Japan's cultural identity had been impacted by World War II and its aftermath.
- Quotes
Psychiatrist: You're not the only lonely man. Being free always involves being lonely. Just there is a mask you can peel off and another you can not.
- ConnectionsReferenced in Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)
Featured review
After an industrial accident that leaves his face disfigured for life, Mr. Okuyama (Tatsuya Nakadai)begins to question the meaning of life and his own identity, should he keep working, will his disgusted wife ever sleep with him again. His psychotherapist offers him the chance to avail of an illegal medical practice that he has invented, it's a mask moulded from the face of another, that Okuyama can wear to live life a little more normally. The mask gives him a new lease of life, but his therapist warns him that the mask could take over and influence him to do evil things. As the mask takes control Okuyama can't resist but to give in to his baser instincts, his main plan being, to seduce own wife, that he believes may be cheating on him anyway. With thematic echoes of Franju's Les Yeux sans visage and even Delmer Daves Dark Passage, Teshigahara delivers his expressionistic adaptation of Kôbô Abe's novel with style, the results being a dark and epic tale that will haunt its viewers. Its full of inventive visuals and clever tricks with sound, which along with Tôru Takemitsu's superb score contribute wonderfully to the theme of how fragile identity really is and how the masks we all wear hide our true beings and souls. There's also a secondary story of an unnamed facially deformed girl, who is also struggling to cope with her disfigurements and her tragedy is equally moving.
- Prof-Hieronymos-Grost
- Nov 12, 2008
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Details
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $35,185
- Runtime2 hours 4 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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