Flat Faces

Watched "Body of Lies" (2008) last night with DiCaprio expressing everything through degrees of squint. There’s this much available in Hollywood lore about holding back the moment when your fans tire of you: keep a flat face and you last as a commodity longer on the screen. Lots of winces and harrumphs tire the audience. Give them a lot of expressions and they learn your entire inventory of gestures in too little time. It’s what leads to over-exposure. Showing no emotion in moments of crisis lets you make a zero impression where you would expect to provoke a horrified scream from a normal human. Zero impressions help you last longer in public, before your admirers move on to newer faces. If I had written a story that when filmed left the viewer totally in the dark half the time, I too would dream up a title like “Body of Lies” to suggest that the viewer is watching intrigue rather than sloppy exposition.