By Ma. Alaine Pernecita Allanigue
When you log in
to your facebook accounts, most of the time, you are concerned with the way you
look on your profile picture. In short, what you want others would like to see
on you or on what you like others to think when they click on your account.
Mostly it is based on your face, the face in which mostly people would draw in
their attention and create an idea on how you look. The face can create several
meanings and Gilles Deleuze has his own meaning for the face.
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| Photo Source: http://www.picturenose.com/wp-content/uploads/Requiem.jpg |
Gilles Delueze’s
The affection-image Face and Close-up
suggests that a face is not necessarily a face reflecting the different organs
such as eyes, nose, mouth, etc. It is the body of expression which reflects the
over-all underlying meaning of an image. A face constructs the soul of the
scene.
According to Deleuze:
“The
face is this organ-carrying plate of nerves which has sacrificed most of its
global mobility and which gathers or expresses in a free way all kinds of tiny
local movements which the rest of the body usually keeps hidden.”
… There
is no close-up of the face, the face is in itself close-up, the close-up is by
itself face and both are affect, affection-image.”
Through the use
of a face, a person may know the feeling, desire, or even what the character is
thinking, it may also have a follow up of another image in order to establish
what is the desire. Just like in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, a series of
images were lined up to create a thought.
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| Photo Source: http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/requiem_for_a_dream.jpg |
Darren
Aronofsky’s film “Requiem for a Dream” has a high practice of close ups showing
the state of mind of each character. There were shots where the screen is
divided showing each perspective of each character.
The change of
state of mind from sanity to insanity can be distinguished through the close
ups. Fear and joy is shown though close-ups. Moreover, just like in Andy
Warhol’s film of cutting the frame which gives the viewers the idea of what is
happening outside the frame is also used in the film.
Several cutting
close up shots are shown to establish the scenes.
Gilles Deleuze’s
affection-image concept relates to
the close-up image. A face has its own identity or even an object in close-up
has its own face. ‘a single close-up can
simultaneously join several faces, or parts of different faces.’ These
close-ups joined to other close-ups can form several thoughts and meanings. The
sense of space can be forgotten and a sense of a whole entity can be perceived.
Facial expressions can be interpreted by the way it is emphasized. ‘As long as there are faces, they turn like
planets around a fixed star and, in turning, they are constantly turning away.
A very small change of direction of the face varies the relationship of its
hard and tender parts, and so modifies the affect.’
The close-ups
used in the film are abundant and these faces of the characters are remarkable
and distinctive. The transition or change of such character is portrayed by the
close-ups. The changes in physical appearance and even behavior are reflected
by their faces. The noticeable sound-making cranks of the Sara Goldfarb teeth
indicate her change in physical and mental state. Harry Goldfarb, Tyrone Love
and Marion Silver’s faces shows their disorientation due to drug dependency.
According to Deleuze:
“There are two sorts
of questions which we can put to a face, depending on the circumstances:
What are you thinking
about? Or, What is bothering you, what is the matter, what do you sense or
feel?
Sometimes the face
thinks about something, is fixed on to an object, and this is the sense of
admiration or astonishment that the English word wonder has preserved.”
Through the
face, a question of desire arises too. In “Requiem for a dream”, what drives
them to do such acts? What destroyed their lives?
Desire has been
an ingrained seed to people here on earth. Each of us has his/her own desire
and this also has kept the world turning. Sometimes, desires can lead to good
results but not all the time. Desires can also fall on to the desire of the
flesh, desire of the mind, desire of the heart and many more. And these desires
can push the limits and put consequence awareness behind the line. In most
narrative films, ‘desire’ is the key motivating influence.
On the other
hand, in Gilles Deleuze’s book Anti-Oedipus analyzing the relationship of
desire to reality and to capitalist society. Desire is derived from lack of
something. ‘According to Deleuze and Guattari, the object is one of fantasy
because it is produced by desire, desire is not produced by it: “Desire is not
bolstered by needs, but rather the contrary; needs are derived from desire:
they are counter products within the real that desire produces”.
In Aronofsy’s
“Requiem for a dream”, it has the element of ‘desire’ specifically the ‘drug’.
This has shown how drug has destroyed each character’s life and has put their
alignment to the factory of social machines into a desiring-machine with broken
fragments of dreams.
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