The Big Shave Review
This film was not was I was expecting. The opening shots of the bathroom seemed kind of comical in a pathetic way, especially with the jazzy music playing in the background. There is this overwhelming sense of cleanliness, everything is white and shiny. Even the man’s shirt when he walks in is a dazzling white. But not quite everything is perfect - the sink is dripping.
The man barely looks like he needs a shave in the first place. But he very methodically puts on the shaving cream and goes to work. At one point the shot zooms in on his face. It was hard for me to tell but he looks like he’s crying (but he might just be sweating a lot). After the first shave it looks like he rubs his face to feel for any stubble. Unsatisfied, it appears, he prepares to shave again. But this time around, he cuts his face while he shaves, ending with a dramatic slitting of the throat.
The one thing that I really noticed when it got to him cutting his face was the music. One line in particular caught my attention: “Still I’m broken hearted cause I can’t get started with you”. Which makes me think that maybe he is doing this because of a woman that left him. I went back and looked at the opening shots of everything in the bathroom and realized that there were two toothbrushes, but no other signs really of another person using the bathroom. Perhaps his attention to cleanliness is somehow related to why the woman isn’t there. Maybe that’s why he shaves again - he feels like he can’t do enough, pay close enough attention to have her, so he shaves himself away. I’m not really sure though. Either way, this film disturbed me because I was not expecting that. At all.
