Expressions

This is the trailer for the film Visitors (from the folks behind Koyaanisqatsi).

I appreciate photography and videography of human emotion, particularly the many wonderful expressions and iterations of joy and happiness and ecstasy. Sadness and anger and outrage may be compelling, too.

But I have relished frowns for as long as I can remember. The frown is rich with potential—a frown needn’t be disapproving, austere, or frightful. Indeed, frowns are perhaps, above all, thoughtful.

The frowns in this trailer are all the more fascinating because they lack any context. All we have are rhetorics of display that work in multiple directions simultaneously—as viewers, we try to understand the meanings behind bunched eyebrows and tilted heads, but those we view seem to be starting at us (or something), working out the the same kinds of calculuses.