Hiaw Khim Tan

The Melancholy Faces of Birth

The face that reacts, looks, and is in all senses purposeful, has served as the fulcrum of the construction of point-of-view and the evocation of subjectivity within classical film narration. Yet there is a tradition of criticism that proposes an alternative fascination to the face on-screen-from Bela Balázs to Jean Epstein, from Louis Aragon to André Bazin-that marvels at the monstrosity, the giganticism of these faces in films, and above all, in the tension provoked by the hesitations in movement apparent in such a close view of human physiognomy. The disturbance in the film Birth (2004, Jonathan Glazer) is caused by an incursion into the household, in the form of an uncanny child who possesses intimate knowledge of a dead man’s life, and who is both glaringly unfit, yet magnetic in his claims of being a husband to the widow, Anna. The film is particularly striking for its attention to the states of hesitation, vacillation, and fretful uncertainty in its treatment of the close-up, and its construction of competing points of view. What the film attempts, through its observation of these faces, is to suggest the movement and rhythm of the evaluative processes and emotions underlying silent contemplation, that threaten to erupt into speech and action. Birth is a film that can be said to participate in Epstein’s declaration that, ‘Now the tragedy is anatomical.’

I am currently in the Cinema and Media Studies program at the University of Chicago, by way of a degree in film and literature at the University of Warwick (UK).  I work on issues of film style and interpretation, particularly as they relate to the formation of the diegetic world in classical Hollywood cinema.