Movie of the Week: Faces Places
Alexa: I chose “Faces Places” as this week’s movie because I remember seeing it crop up on dozens of lists of the top 10 movies of 2017 and I wondered what all the fuss was about - and I can easily say all that high praise was warranted. This is a delightful little gem of a film, the type of thing I crave discovering on Netflix. As a journalist I’ve always been drawn to profiles and features because I love telling other people’s stories, and that’s exactly what “Faces Places” celebrates. Director Agnès Varda and artist JR simply travel throughout France, meeting and talking to ordinary people in ordinary places. Watching this film, I was immediately reminded of the last line of the U.S. version of “The Office” - “There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of the point?” That sentiment is “Faces Places” in a nutshell. There is tremendous value in every person’s story, in every person’s experience, just as there is tremendous value in the power of creation and ...