6.4 | / 10 |
Users | 1.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.4 |
1962. While sightseeing at the Acropolis in Athens, a glamorous American couple, the charismatic Chester MacFarland and his alluring younger wife, Colette, encounter Rydal, a young, Greek-speaking American who is working as a tour guide, scamming tourists on the side. Drawn to Colette's beauty and impressed by Chester's wealth and sophistication, Rydal gladly accepts their invitation to dinner. However, all is not as it seems with the MacFarlands, and Chester's affable exterior hides darker secrets.
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, Oscar Isaac, David Warshofsky, Daisy BevanThriller | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
BD-Live
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The Two Faces of January is a lesser known work by novelist Patricia Highsmith, author of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. The title refers to the Roman god Janus, who is the god of beginnings and transitions and for whom the first month of the year was long thought to be named. Janus is typically depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions; his image will be familiar to fans of the Criterion Collection, because many of those classics are part of the Janus Films series. In The Two Faces of January ("TTFOJ"), however, each of the main characters is pretending to be someone they're not, and their "second" face doesn't emerge until later. TTFOJ is the directorial debut of screenwriter Hossein Amini, whose works include Drive, Snow White and the Huntsman and The Wings of the Dove . Amini has said that this was his only script that he wanted to direct himself, because he felt such a personal connection to the material. "Highsmith has an uncanny ability to shine a light on the parts of ourselves we'd rather hide, especially the indignity of human emotions and behavior", he said. "The darker side of human nature is often explored in films but rarely the weaker side. That is what fascinated me about this book."
The Two Faces of January was shot digitally by Marcel Zyskind (A Mighty Heart, 9 Songs), using anamorphic lenses to soften the image. According to IMDb, the camera was the Arri Alexa. With post-production on a digital intermediate, Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced from digital files. Though film-like in its lack of digital harshness, the Blu-ray image has the sharpness and clarity necessary to reproduce the film's exotic locations in intricate detail, so that the characters really do feel out of their element and isolated. The colors are gorgeously rendered, beginning with the pale, golden hues of the sun-drenched Athens locations and concluding in the dark, richly colored interiors of the Grand Bazaar. The many night scenes have solid blacks and deep shadows, which become especially critical during a key sequence in the caverns beneath the ruins at Knossos. Probably because the extras are limited, Magnolia has placed this 97-minute film on a BD-25, achieving an average bitrate of 22.004 Mbps. While Magnolia typically provides higher bandwidth for its features, this appears to have been sufficient for a digitally originated feature that, while complex in its imagery, does not feature major action. No artifacts were in evidence.
TTFOJ's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in DTS-HD MA, provides a low-key sense of the shifting environmental ambiance in various tourist sights, markets, hotels, restaurants and forms of travel. Every so often, one particular sound is elevated from the mix to attract special attention, e.g., the sound of a local fisherman's net being slapped on the rocks off-camera, which awakens one of the characters after a night's heavy drinking. The dialogue, which is frequently spoken in hushed tones, is clear and natural-sounding. The film has an effectively urgent score by Alberto Iglesias (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Bad Education), whom Amini asked to write something in the style of Bernard Herrmann.
Magnolia's press notes for TTFOJ suggest that Amini would have had much to say in a commentary, which makes it especially unfortunate that none is included. Indeed, given the loving care that obviously went into crafting the production, the scant features are especially disappointing.
Rarely do I wish that a film were longer, but after watching the deleted scenes for TTFOJ, I found myself wondering whether Amini had been too aggressive in the editing room. He has said that he learned in editing the film that he could tell "almost" the same amount of story in 90 minutes as in two hours, but TTFOJ is a character-driven thriller. The deeper we see into the three main characters, the greater the tension, and Mortensen, Dunst and Isaac all do exceptional work. Then again, TTFOJ may be one of those films where the performances reveal new layers on subsequent viewings. Watching it again will certainly be no effort on this superior Blu-ray presentation. Highly recommended.
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