Vital Faces
One thing I have noticed about reactions and reviews for both Barbie and Oppenheimer is the delight people have expressed in spotting so many familiar and/or new faces. Both films have a deep and impressive roster of actors, many of whom had a chance to shine, no matter how small their roles. As filmgoers, we not only share the excitement of a communal viewing experience, but that visceral, deep-seated pleasure of the look—the scopophilic circumstance and occasion—to both lavish attention on and absorb rapture from human faces.
Given that these two aesthetically and materially dissimilar films captured the imaginations and the dispensable incomes of enough people to break records and unleash several weeks’ worth of social media mentions and memes, a most remarkable detail of such success is that neither heavily relied on the CGI visual effects most associated with summer blockbusters. The faces were the objects of awe.
The star power isn’t limited to the actors onscreen; both films were notable for their recognizable filmmakers (Gerwig and Nolan) as well. Their artistic involvement alone was enough to draw interest, and the subject matter of each film certainly piqued curiosity, along with the high quality production designs. But as their titles so blatantly signal to their intended audiences, these films were about two of the most famous faces in the world’s cultural history. One, a human doll, and the other, a human scientist—both iconic representatives of their kind.
Roland Barthes, in his famous 1957 essay “The Face of Garbo,” posited that Greta Garbo “still belongs to that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy,” and that she “offered to one’s gaze a sort of Platonic Idea of the human creature.” He went on to compare her “existential” beauty to that of Audrey Hepburn’s “essential” beauty, and how their magnetism onscreen taps into humanity’s archetype concerning the “fascination of mortal faces.” Garbo’s androgynous, mask-like visage made her image a concept, while Audrey’s individualized and unique features made her the substance: “The face of Garbo is an idea, that of Hepburn, an Event.” They enthralled audiences by acting as mirrors to our humanity, reflecting minds and hearts attuned to philosophy and aesthetics.
Cillian Murphy has a Garbo-like countenance that is, as Barthes might put it, “almost sexually undefined, without however leaving one in doubt.” Margot Robbie has an undeniable female attractiveness, as well as a talent not unlike Hepburn’s “peculiar thematics” and an “infinite complexity of morphological functions.”
One might be forgiven for thinking it ironic that Robbie delivers one of her most stirring performances playing a plastic doll, but therein lies her power as an artist more substantive than a mere pretty face. And Murphy, whose depiction of a man so internally complex and nuanced as to incite plaudits for his powerfully understated portrayal, belies the enormous effort expended to bring his character to life.
They’re both wearing theatre masks—one painted, and one invisible—but like the paradox of Schrodinger’s cat, an observer cannot tell who is wearing which, at least not until the actor reveals something ineffable in their face. That moment is when the mask is taken off, and a viewer snatches a connection to the performer’s singularity of pure human vulnerability, which generates a catharsis, “when one literally [loses] oneself in a human image as one would in a philtre.”
The ecstasy of the face is so spellbinding that it even outweighs the incredible power of photorealistic CGI “makeup” being more regularly employed in movies in the last decade. Digital avatars rendered through performance capture have grown so detailed and subtle that non-human creatures can be as affecting as humans onscreen. Actors get de-aged, altered, duplicated, and even resurrected through this technology, which legitimately raises the question of authenticity and is a significant issue at the heart of the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. But audiences know the potency of a great yarn, and a well-executed performance.
Unforgettable screenplays are not written by ChatGPT. An Oscar-winning role is not won by ones and zeros. A computer program may string together a series of facial movements that represent realistic emotions, and an AI may generate an actor’s voice and produce a viable deepfake, but they cannot duplicate an actor’s idiosyncratic choices. The authorship of an actor’s performance is key, and is what truly captivates audiences.
Andy Serkis often states in interviews that the technology he’s famous for ought to be taken up as an valuable tool of the trade for any actor to exploit in their craft, and that any actor may don the dots for a role. But he has also said that you can only get out of it what you put in; the hard work of characterization must still be done. Additionally, raw talent is essential in this case, since not every actor has both the command of their emotions and their faces to the degree someone like Serkis does. His distinctively elastic face (and his voice) is a kinetic sculpture as his beck, and the secret to his moving viewers to empathize and identify with so many of his characters—CGI avatars or humans—is his uncanny ability to convert the human facial concept to substance.
Only a human can do that.
From the moment we are born, we are drawn to faces. We are so allured by the face that we see them and seek them in rock formations and tortillas, clouds and puddles, shadows and burn marks in toast. Unless one is a vampire, the mirror is a ubiquitous object in our homes. In some cases, like that of Jesus, we even seek salvation in beholding the image of a beneficent face. If we can learn anything from the Barbenheimer phenomenon, it’s that perhaps we as filmgoers are now enervated by the theme park thrill rides, but energized by portraits of humanity.
Artists together strong.
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