How can one face say all that?, part 2

It’s been suggested to me a few times that Mr. Armitage’s face is attractive because of its symmetry. Actually, I don’t think his face is all that symmetrical (most people’s aren’t), and I think that’s part of what draws our eyes to it. This photo may help you to decide for yourself. I think that at times Armitage has two really distinct halves of his face, and because (if you watch him in scenes where his face is changing emotion, you’ll see that) emotion tends to move across his face from left to right. The effect of this tendency can be enhanced by lighting him from the side, so that one impression is stronger while the other remains in shadow.

John Porter (Richard Armitage), about to resign from the regiment, in Strike Back 1.1. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

This asymmetry enhances Mr. Armitage’s capacity to exploit microexpressions, I think: as emotions move quickly across his face we see slightly more complexity because he’s actually saying different things in different places. Here’s the scene in question, from Strike Back 1.1.

This cap comes around 0:31 above. And what I’m pointing out in the cap below really are microexpressions, because we see them at most for a fleeting instant, and we have to watch the clip in slomo to see some of this consciously at all. The asymmetry of his face is thus exploited in conjunction with an unconscious effect on us as viewers.

The same photo, slightly retouched so we can see what’s happened on the left side of his face more clearly.

It’s a bit like his emotions are a storm passing across his face from left to right. Over time, the muscles on the left side of his face have actually taken a slightly different form, which also makes the tendency to react this way more obvious. A lot of additional stuff about Porter’s mood becomes clear from the position in the clip, particularly the transition in head positions as Porter interacts with his commander, who’s seated below him, and the weirdness of his apparent physical discomfort in the dress uniform, which, in combination with his rigid posture (aside from his head position) makes him seem simultaneously strong and weak in this scene. But in itself the face says everything: the honorable man dishonored, the strong man weakened, the energetic man accepting of his fate, the man who’s always relied on his body and his judgment conceding that both were wrong and not asking questions — the tension that Armitage builds for Porter here between humility and humiliation. It’s a facial expression that makes clear exactly the contradictions that Armitage sought to build into the character, and it’s so ambivalent at times that it’s transfixing: we don’t know where to look, or with which John Porter exactly to sympathize, but we can’t help, as viewers, being drawn into the scene along with Armitage to try to resolve the contradictions.

~ by Servetus on August 11, 2011.