The Face in Close-Up and Narrative Transparency

Abstract

In its first part, the article compares various theoretical insights into the topic, beginning with Balázs’s claim that the magnification and proximity of the face in close-up replace narrative movement, i.e. action, with micromovement that represents subjectivity. For Deleuze, the face in close-up is deterritorialized into the “feeling-thing,” the entity as the set-up of the affect. For Deleuze, the close-up abstracts the face from its bearer. Furthermore, the film face as a mask is presented (Barthes). Besides the metaphor of the cinema as a mirror within psychoanalytical film theory, the insights of the cognitive film theory are analyzed, particularly the function of the face in the “scenes of empathy” (Plantinga). The second part examines the role of the face in Rok Biček’s first feature film Razredni sovražnik (Class Enemy, 2013), which presents the revolt of a class against an authoritative teacher following the suicide of their classmate Sabina. This film exposes the opaqueness of the face most notably in the representation of Sabina’s face, particularly as it is presented within the context of her friend’s mental images, memories. But the mysteriousness of her face is most prominent in the masks created from the photography of Sabina’s face that her classmates put on in an act of rebellion against their teacher. Sabina’s face is the film’s blind spot: although completely exposed to our gaze, its meaning remains ambiguous, even unattainable. Such representation seems to reject the face as “an instrument of signification” (Eleftheriotis).