The Man Without a Face
When I was watching “The Beaver” earlier this summer, one film that came to mind was Mel Gibson’s directorial debut, “The Man Without a Face.” In it, Gibson played Justin McLeod, a reclusive former teacher who had been in a car accident years before, and was horribly disfigured as a result. Now he is gossiped about and ridiculed by the children and adults who come to this Maine getaway every summer, until one boy– obsessed with getting into a boarding school, and away from his mother and two half-sisters –takes a chance, and hopes that McLeod will tutor him. The stories of the two films couldn’t be more different, but the themes of fathers and sons, and a man who finds redemption through children, make the films kindred spirits.
But whereas Gibson’s friend Jodie Foster directs the later film with delicacy and deep recesses of sadness and intelligent wit, Gibson’s film feels weighted in melodrama and pretension. Gibson’s later films as a director, “Braveheart,” “The Passion of the Christ,” and “Apocalypto,” were no less heavy-handed, but more sure-footed in their approach to their material. But “The Man Without a Face” remains a moving and powerful film thanks to the central performances by Gibson and Nick Stahl, who made his film debut as the boy, Chuck Norstadt.
The film starts out with a dream of Chuck’s. He has just graduated from a military Academy, and the place is alive with celebration. It’s a good dream. But there’s one face he can’t see. Chuck has fond memories of his father, but he hasn’t seen him since his parents divorced when he was four. Now he lives a life of constant searching, for a way out. He can’t take life with his mother (Margaret Whitton), his sisters, Gloria (Fay Masterson) and Megan (Gaby Hoffmann), and the endless string of husbands, the latest of which (Richard Masur), is a hairy college professor with a liberal streak. One day, his friends and he are hanging out on the rocks by McLeod’s house when a dog scares them off, but Chuck left his books. When he goes back, he meets the man people call, “freak,” “hamburger head.” Rumors and gossip abound about this man, but when he finds out that McLeod was a teacher, Chuck offers a proposal that could get him out of his current life, and gives McLeod a second chance to do what he loved.
Gibson’s style as a director is not one of subtlety: even in his best films, he underlines and highlights every emotional beat with bombastic performance and music, although James Horner’s score for this film rates as one of his best. And the cinematography by Donald M. McApline sometimes uses a lighting pallet that follows suit with the melodramatic tone Gibson goes for as he tells a story of an unexpected friendship that is under scrutiny because it doesn’t fit into comfortable social conventions. When McLeod and Chuck perform the famous scene from “The Merchant of Venice,” wherein McLeod plays the role of the Shylock as he asks for tolerance for the Jews, the subtext is front-and-center as opposed to just below the surface where it should be. (The scene, which Gibson plays with masterful passion, is even more fascinating given the actor’s troubles of the past few years.) Of course, from what I know about Isabelle Holland’s novel, which the film was based on, Gibson and screenwriter Malcolm MacRury take enormous liberties with the original story so that it fits into the actor’s larger body of work, in which his characters are typically martyred for their ideals and misunderstood for their actions, forced into defending themselves against forces that seek to destroy them. Part of what made “The Beaver” so extraordinary in the Gibson filmmography is how the film fits thematically into the type of material the actor gravitates towards, but deftly avoids the trappings of films such as “The Man Without a Face,” giving us our most personal glimpse into the real Gibson on-screen yet. Hopefully, it won’t be the last time, either.
All that being said, Gibson’s first film behind the camera shows a born director at work, especially when it comes to actors. Everyone shines in this film, although the film rises and falls on the performances by the director himself (still one of his best, even as he hides himself underneath burn makeup) and young Stahl, who has become a terrific young performer in films as versatile as “Sin City” (he was the Yellow Bastard), “In the Bedroom” (in which his character was in another unconventional relationship), and even “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” as a 20-something John Connor. The film itself hits us over the head with its ideas, but the heart that makes us care comes from the startling teamwork by Gibson and Stahl, who bring this unlikely friendship to life with artistry and intelligence.
