The British DVD company Eureka! has a specialty label it calls the “Masters of Cinema” Series. They have already built quite a reputation for producing high quality discs with interesting special features and lengthy booklets included with the release. Most of their DVDs are PAL format and will only play on DVD players equipped to handle Region 2 discs. Of course there are numerous DVD players that just require a sequence to be pressed on the remote to unlock region free capabilities, allowing it to play DVDs from all over the world.

Anyway, The Face of Another was released on DVD in 2005 by the Masters of Cinema (or “MoC”, if you will) as spine number 6. Like its American counterpart, the Criterion Collection, MoC likes to use spine numbers to entice collectors to purchase as many of their releases as possible. Sort of like action figures or Happy Meal toys.

The Face of Another is a Japanese film directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara that explores questions of identity, appearance and the confidence we seek from exterior sources. The protagonist in the film was badly burned in a laboratory and must wear bandages to cover his face. He has become embittered and closed off from his wife and society. After he feels rejected romantically from his wife, he grows desperate and seeks a lifelike mask to be made by the doctor who has been treating him. Soon, he sees that the mask has not only affected how others look at him, but also how he perceives himself.

I really cannot speak highly enough of this extraordinary film. I think there’s an obvious comparison to John Frankenheimer’s great Seconds, also from 1966 and starring Rock Hudson. Both films deal with a man who can no longer deal with his physical appearance and attempt to alter how he looks through a medical procedure, with disastrous results. In both films, the man initially thinks he is better off with his new appearance but soon realizes that he has lost a unique part of himself in the process. As bad as things seemed for the characters before the alterations, both men come to the realization that their identities were located in their original incarnations. Unfortunately, neither man can regain the identity he has lost.

In The Face of Another, I also see how the protoganist, played by Tatsuya Nakadai struggles with confidence when he is still wearing the bandages on his face in comparison to his increased happiness and sociability once he begins wearing the mask. He is thus allowed to hide behind the mask, as well as a beard the doctor has stuck on his face and a pair of dark sunglasses. He no longer has to worry about others perceiving him as a “monster,” to use the word someone yells at a young woman whose face is scarred on the right side. This builds up his confidence to the point where he feels comfortable flirting with a receptionist at the office of the company he worked at and eventually allows him to try to seduce his wife, who he thinks will not recognize him as being her husband. The man’s folly is in thinking that others only perceive persons based on a face. While his face had been drastically changed since his wife had last seen him, he remained the same person, regardless of how he perceived himself.

“In love, we all try to unmask one another,” his wife tells him. “So I thought we should try to wear masks.” This is an important line. It probably applies not just to love, but to everything we do in the company of others. Almost everyone, if not all of us, fear showing our true selves to everyone else. We call it privacy or many other words. The truth is we lack the confidence to believe anyone could possibly tolerate or love the flaws we see in ourselves.

The Face of Another is an engrossing, fascinating work. For anyone who has ever felt like they were lacking in any way or that they would be better off as someone else, it is essential viewing.