ABSTRACT
We started out with his face. He was cunning and dangerous, assured of his power. He looked us in the eye, challenged us to look away, and began to tell his story. We return now to the same face, now powerless, no longer confident of his capacity to master whatever he sees either through intimidation and violence or with his boyish charm. He's no longer looking at us, but, like us, at a screen. Rendered passive by an apparatus that secures his body and holds his eyes wide open, he's forced to witness moving images that aren’t so different from some we’d already seen of his exploits prior to incarceration. If, in the beginning, we saw ourselves seen, this image might be thought to depict the condition of seeing what we can do nothing about. We should consider at least the extent to which this condition resembles our own as we watch this (or any) film.
