Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

The Two Faces of January Blu-ray Movie Review

The (Bad) Company You Keep

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 14, 2015

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."

In 1962, a prosperous-looking American couple, Chester and Colette MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst) are touring Greece. We find them walking through the Parthenon in Athens, as Chester reads from a guidebook to his vivacious trophy wife. At the same time, a young Greek-speaking American, Rydal (Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis), is working as a tour guide, shepherding a group of young American college girls through the ancient Greek structure. As we quickly learn, Rydal is a petty scam artist, using his knowledge of the language and local customs to skim small amounts whenever he handles a transaction for any of the tourists in his charge. It is clear from both his appearance and his manner that Rydal lives by his wits and barely scrapes by. Glimpses of correspondence suggest that he and his family are estranged.

Something about the MacFarlands catches Rydal's eye, but it is never clear whether it's Colette's beauty or the sparkle of wealth. With the practiced eye of a businessman (or is it something else?), Chester feels himself being studied, so that it is no surprise when he finds that his wife has engaged Rydal as their guide through the local marketplace, where he haggles for them over the price of a bracelet that has caught Colette's eye (marking up the price in translation to collect a small commission for himself). Still, Chester enjoys the young man's company enough to invite Rydal to dine with them that evening and to bring along his date, Lauren (Daisy Bevan), one of the girls from the Parthenon tour. Chatter and pleasantries are enjoyed all around, and when the occasion ends, the travelers go their separate ways, filled with fond vacation memories.

But the MacFarlands aren't what they seem, and later that night Chester's past comes knocking in the form of a brusque private detective named Paul Vittorio (David Warshofsky). Vittorio's visit requires Chester and Colette to exit their luxury hotel quickly and secretly, without being able to retrieve their passports from the front desk. As luck would have it, they encounter Rydal in the process, who was coming to return the bracelet that Colette accidentally left behind in the taxi. Shocked by the sudden transformation in his new friends' circumstances, Rydal agrees to help them. His reasons for doing so are unclear, though Chester suspects that the young man is after his wife (and secretly wonders whether Colette doesn't reciprocate the interest). Then again, Rydal may just be doing it for the money. He knows someone who can get them new passports, and this too is a sale where he can mark up the price in translation.

Viewers accustomed to elaborate cons and twist endings will be looking for clues to a larger scam, but TTFOJ isn't that kind of film. The characters that so captured writer/director Amini's imagination in Highsmith's novel aren't Machiavellian masters working intricate cons plotted far in advance. They are improvisers responding as best they can to events that rapidly slip from their control. The polish quickly comes off the MacFarlands as they morph from wealthy tourists to suspects on the lam, and Rydal finds that he has graduated from minor swindles to a world of intrigue and danger whose full extent he only slowly grasps. At some moments, Rydal seems to be looking to Chester as a potential mentor—the father/son theme is explicit—but at others, Rydal looks at Chester in horror and reproach, as he grasps the depth of the older man's ruthless determination to survive at all costs. As for Colette, who thought she'd found a safe haven with Chester, she now knows otherwise, and she simply wants to go home.

As the action moves from Athens to Crete to Turkey, the danger increases and so does the characters' desperation. TTFOJ reaches its climax after a frenetic pursuit through Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, and the conclusion formally ties up all the loose strands of the plot, but one does not experience the emotional satisfaction of seeing justice done. With characters such as these, it's hard to know what justice would look like. To Amini's credit, he doesn't try to provide an answer.

The Two Faces of January Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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.

The Two Faces of January Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

The Two Faces of January Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

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.

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 2.39:1; 6:03): These four brief scenes provide additional character moments, primarily for Mortensen's Chester but also for Dunst's Colette. No reason is given for their removal, but it probably had to do both with pacing and with balancing the screen time devoted to each of the three main characters.
• Cruise ship deck
• Chester's Theseus story
• Chester's sick during the night
• Yahya the Tailor, Istanbul

• Bloopers (1080p; 2.39:1; 3:48): TTFOJ is an odd film to have a gag reel, but actors laugh during takes, no matter how serious the subject.



• Traveling in Style (1080i; 1.78:1; 2:33): This brief promotional featurette focuses on the film's costume design by Steven Noble, who was aiming for the Sixties equivalent of classic Hollywood.



• Shooting the Odyssey (1080i; 1.78:1; 2:51): In another promotional short, director and cast talk about filming on location.



• A Twist on the Classic Thriller (1080i; 1.78:1; 3:09): In yet a third promotional short, director and cast discuss the characters and plot.



• AXS TV: A Look at The Two Faces of January (1080p; 2.39:1; 2:32): This typical AXS TV promo has been created by combining the interviews from "A Twist on the Classic Thriller" with the film's theatrical trailer.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.39:1; 2:16).



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for White Bird in a Blizzard, Frontera, Frank and Life Itself, as well as promos for the Chideo web service and AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live gave the message "Check back later for updates".

The Two Faces of January Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.