When Japanese author Kobo Abe wrote the novel The Face of Another and adapted it into a screenplay with the same title, he was up for taking the Japanese audiences for a Kafkaesque ride into the depths of human psyche with main stops at the darkest corners. The theme of masking and unmaksing has been around for centuries. The Face of Another (1966), directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara, bridges the line from the human face to the human soul as it explores this theme in the story of a man who gets a new face after a horrific incident disfigures him. But what follows brings worse to him than the wounds of the accident.

It is relevant to mention that The Face of Another does not show a before-and-after story of Engineer Okuyama (Tatsuya Nakadai). We are denied seeing his face and pe...

Please subscribe to keep reading.