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What is man's need for a face? How comes the danger of having a mask instead of a face? What is the difference between pain and depression?

M. Gibson & M. MacRury : The Man Without a Face

Audio excerpts from Mel Gibson's movie The Man Without a Face, Selected and introduced for ELLOPOS by Nat Gerrs

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Why does he have that need anyway? The movie does not answer this question - and wisely enough, because there is no answer. This need is born out of nothing, but to be satisfied, a soul must look at another soul. And Charles has already failed, as is normal, but there isn't anyone to help him. He can't stay, he can't leave: he has to return to the nothing. He grasps his head, not to protect his survival, but to try just for a little longer to keep his trust in this newborn need for a face.

At this point the story has arrived at five options, at least. The most obvious are insanity or suicide, or both of them. Insanity is already on its way. Norstadt is indeed flirting with it. At times he is almost completely lost in his dreams. He is checked by doctors, he had a father who commited suicide in a mental institution, etc. The third alternative is to be absorbed by the crowd, which is incompatible with insanity, and the fourth alternative is what indeed happens and we see in the movie. 

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 Cf. Someone Like Hodder | Rilke, Letter to a young poet | Jaspers, Truth is in communication | J. O. y Gassett, The Revolt of the Masses | Tom Schulman, Dead Poets Society | Wordsworth's and Magee's poems | K. Mansfield, There was a child once

More by Nat Gerrs : Why Europe? | J. M. Lefévre, The White Thinking