Heads

New York City is filled with millions of people, and among them are faces you don’t easily forget. Some of these people look so unique – so classic or strikingly odd – that you can’t help but wonder who they are and where they came from, you know? They wander through the streets, parks and subways like character actors who haven’t been discovered by casting directors yet. They’re beautiful, in their own kind of way, because they have a face that sticks out in a crowd – a face that is wholly unique, and noteworthy.

Ben Berman’s latest short film is about faces like these. Sort of. Well, not exactly. Actually… I’m sorry. Let me start over.

Ben Berman’s latest short is about sculptor Jack Cox, who sees these kinds of faces on the street and turns them into weird, three-dimensional, cartoonish sculpture. The film zooms in on the imperfections that make us human, and the importance of celebrating a kind of beauty that doesn’t necessarily fit the traditional mold. It bills itself as “a documentary with talking heads,” and while I don’t want to spoil what that means, it is unlike what you usually expect when you hear “documentary” and “talking heads” in the same sentence. 

“If there’s one lesson that stands out, it’s the importance of embracing imperfection.” – Berman discussing what he learned when creating Heads

This is the third short we’ve featured from Berman, and what I love about his work is that you never know which form it’s going to take. The first film we featured – How to Lose Weight in Four Easy Steps – is a live action short starring Beck Bennett and Britt Lower. The second – The Follow-Up – is a deeply meta screenlife film shot during the pandemic, composed largely of cameo recordings from celebrities. Heads takes a more traditional documentary format, but it imbues something traditional with something new — it brings sculptor Cox’s caricature-like sculpted heads to life, quite literally. All this is to say that Berman has range as a filmmaker. In a world where people tend to niche-ify themselves into careers where they do the same thing that works over and over again, he should be applauded for his proclivity for trying something new. 

New York has its fair share of artists whose subject is the city itself, but what makes Heads particularly interesting is how it turns the camera back on one of these artists – who are more comfortable making someone else the focus. There’s a tendency for these artists to stay safely in the shadows, to live as invisible voyeurs who hide themselves from the world, and in talking to Cox, Berman brings him to the forefront, in some ways.

“I think there’s always this awareness of how people are seeing me”

“I think that I’m always doubting my own art,” says Cox, in an interview in the film. “I have pretty intense social anxiety, so I think there’s always this awareness of how people are seeing me.” In many ways, the interview reveals that artists who take other people as their subject sometimes do so because they’re uncomfortable being the subject themselves, or being the center of attention. There’s a tendency for people to see artists as judgmental, pretentious or cruel, but I don’t think that’s the case here. You can tell that Cox isn’t looking at these people in a cruel way – he’s looking at them because they’re unique and interesting and memorable. 

“Jack’s work is a reminder that the most human, relatable art often comes from a place of rawness” – director Berman

That being said, this is a film about two artists – a filmmaker and a sculptor – working through their own anxieties on screen, and it’s a delicate dance that pays off. As Berman says in a statement, “Over the years, I’ve worked on a variety of projects – long-form documentaries, comedy tv shows, narrative shorts – and I’ve always been significantly controlling of the outcome. I set high expectations, and it hasn’t always worked in my favor. But through Heads, I realized something crucial: embracing imperfection is not a sign of failure. It doesn’t mean we stop striving for excellence; it just means we learn to listen to the work itself, allowing it to evolve and breathe on its own terms. And imperfection is human.” Sculptor Jack Cox says something similar in the doc: “We do a lot of things to like…assimilate or blend in, but at the end of the day we’re just kind of like…these weird, fleshy creatures.”

In some ways, I like this film because it reminds us that art – and artists – don’t need to be perfect to succeed. Flaws are inevitably more interesting than perfection, and this film celebrates that. The short – like the work of Jack Cox – is a reminder that the quest for perfection is boring, and it also serves as proof that it’s okay to keep the “ums” in the interview sometimes – they are, after all, the kind of thing that make us human.