User reviews

a question more than a film. nothing surprising for Sokurov.because not the story is the axis but the atmosphere the air who seems be mud, the dialogues who are cold and bitter, the actors who becomes shadows. a film who propose the world in precise slices. and that is the source of controversies and the heart of a fascinating film about reality and choices. far to be comfortable, it is a challenge. because it propose the aesthetic of ugly things, because firs scene is an open corpse and the pact with devil has different nuances by the classic text of Goethe. but the idea is the same.same, the need of certitude. a film about the taste of knowledge. and the essence of self definition.

The way Sokurov treats this story makes it clear that his characters are all immersed in the day tot day doings, the earthly aspects of our lives, and it is hard or even impossible to escape. He brings it home to us, he gets us involved through his camera and sound, Faust becomes us. The first time I know of that this story was told in such a way that we can actually get inside Faust. Sokurov brings home some intriguing themes. Is Faust's soul maybe already missing from the start? What is our perception of Faust's hell and/or heaven, and how easy are we manipulated? We don't seem to need a lot of arguments and talking to win us over...

Compared to an aesthetic depiction of something like The Portrait of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, also a story of corruption, this ugly, often grotestque film, loosely based on Goethe´s Faust, is disappointing. It was a slog to get through because it was so drab and disgusting. Dust and darkness everywhere. Gross, deformed characters. Filth, misery, poverty, disease. Rats. Altogether quite unpleasant to watch. Still, I have to say that the director succeeds in creating a film as depressing as its subject: the corruption of a human being and the selling of his soul.

FAUST tries a bit too hard at times to shock, or to impress with its technical aspect: the opening close-up of the rotting genitalia of a male cadaver being autopsied pretty much sets the tone; anything goes. Unfortunately, that includes some fairly simple but overused in-camera effects, like the use of distorting lenses (which add absolutely nothing to the meandering narrative and actually detract from the lavish production values). Death, himself, is a bore who waddles around in a rubber fat suit "weighing souls." "Is the world too cramped for you?" someone asks at one point. It's a question I pondered even as I watched this one unfold: having spent far too much of my time watching experimental films and video over the years, I can honestly say that- for ME- the world IS cramped with far too many such films.

Aleksandr Sokurov's take at Faust is a courageous act. Yet, my issues with this movie have nothing to do with the discussion whether a Russian director might understand the essence of Goethe's work. This is a futile debate, because Sokurov comes closer to Goethe than an average Westerner to Russian classics, as displayed in Joe Wright's Anna Karenina (2011).

In Faust, Sokurov did what he's done before. There are rather realistic, almost documentary images and there are dream-like sequences. We've seen the former in, for example, the trilogy of Moloch (1999), Taurus (2001) and The Sun (2005). And we've seen the latter in, for example, Russian Ark (2002) and Alexandra (2007). So what went wrong?

Again, i'm expressing my views here and won't try to judge Sokurov's talents and abilities. In Faust we kick off with the daily work of Dr. Faust and progress toward the space beyond reality. Whether it is a higher plane of existence or main character's hallucination is left unclear, yet it portrays well his inner state, triggered by malnutrition and selling the soul. Personally, at a certain point i found this movie difficult to watch...

It begins with the evisceration of a corpse, and that could be a metaphor for the way this alleged adaptation proceeds - except that Goethe's "Faust" is not dead, only given the dead-letter treatment here. The film's emphasis is on gross, clumsy physicality: you never saw so many actors stumble as they walk, bumping into things and one another; too artless and unfunny for slapstick, the universal jostling is prevented from being laughable by funereal pacing and the array of hangdog faces. Since the Faust figure (Johannes Zeiler) conveys very little in the way of intellect, all that elevates him is that most of the other characters have been made open-mouthed gapers, presumable halfwits. Wit is barred out anyway by the color-palette, all various hues of mud - the surest sign of high-serious intentions in movies nowadays. In exterior shots the sky is overexposed so it shows as a gleamless white blur; the earth is dun-colored, greens are gray-tinged, and reds are virtually absent, on their rare appearance tending to brown, like bloodstained linens oxidizing. The cut of the men's clothing updates the story to several decades after Goethe's time: trousers are worn, rather than breeches and hose. The fabrics are thick, heavy, coarse, and of course dark-dyed and fraying badly. No one could think of playing the dandy here. Strangely, there seems to be no Republic of Letters either. The few characters with intellectual interests neither write nor receive letters; they're isolated from enlightenment and worldly affairs: no one awaits the postman; no one looks at a journal of science or politics or the arts - this is a stupefying omission, as false to the historical period as it would be to Goethe's own. Sokurov's flight from historical particulars strands his Faust: the fable and the character become "timeless" in all the wrong ways. Faust doesn't represent his age's high hopes, or its seeds of self-destruction; but then he doesn't represent our age either. Sealed off in its remoteness, Sokurov's "Faust" is just another - all-too-familiar - sulking, glooming art-house reverie.

Faust has quite rightly fallen under everyone's radar. I had never heard of it, until I saw it in a list someone made. It looked interesting, and then I read that it made one of my all time favourite directors, Darren Aronofsky cry. He has also infamously stated that Faust is the kind of film that has the power to change your life, or something along those lines. I then watched the trailer and it looked intense, powerful and not too much unlike Darren's own operatic masterpiece, Black Swan, which happens to be possibly my favourite film of all time. Thus of course I was sold. I bought the film on blu ray for £6.26 and was extremely excited to give it a watch. I went into Faust very open-minded. More than open-minded because I was honestly looking forward to it, I was expecting a beautifully intense and dream-like film, but unfortunately that is not what I received.

The highest point in Faust is the brilliant opening shot which gracefully glides through the sky, where a mirror is bizarrely floating. We then pass underneath the clouds to reveal some awesome mountains and a village. It's a brilliant shot, reminiscent of Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge! We then get a nice close-up of a dead man's penis and some grisly depictions of an autopsy. It's here that the film slowly goes downhill, or rather curiously meanders down a dull path which should hopefully cure anyone of insomnia. A lot of reviewers seem concerned that the film is not a direct re-telling of the Faust legend. Unluckily for me, I have never read or seen anything to do with Goethe's Faust, which is a shame because it may have helped me to understand what was going on, as I was sometimes lost.

My first problem with the film is that it has been unnecessarily boxed up. By this I mean that the film has black bands either side of the screen, which makes it more difficult to appreciate one of it's biggest redeeming features, the visuals. I don't see the point in doing this, unless it's only on the UK blu ray version of the film, which by the way, is not blu ray quality! It's also very easy to get lost in the film, and not in a good David Lynch kind of way, but a tedious way. I watch a lot of subtitled films, because I have a passion for foreign cinema, but even I found it difficult to keep up with. Someone is always talking at quite a brisk pace, meaning that you've got to keep up with the subtitles, meaning that a lot of the visuals get lost. The dialogue is also quite boringly pretentious with talks about philosophy and the like.

However, if you strip back the story of the film there really isn't too much to it. It's just about a man who befriends an old man (who I think is supposed to be the devil) and he randomly falls for a young bereaved woman, and decides to sign his soul away in order to spend a night with her. But for some reason the film has been ludicrously padded out to 2 hours 20 minutes (it feels longer). Much of the film just follows Faust as he plods around with the devil, who rambles on for non-stop about things I don't entirely understand. It's the walking equivalent to a road movie, only nothing very interesting happens. I found much of it very boring, but I stuck with it.

Faust isn't all bad though. It's at its most interesting when it's using surrealism to a bizarre and sometime unsettling effect. There's a monkey on the moon, an old man with a body like Danny De Vito in Batman Returns and a small person in a jar made from the liver of a donkey. Unfortunately these moments are few and far between. The film is much more interesting in lecturing the audience through boring characters who don't really develop or interest in any way. The film is also very often fantastic to look at. I loved how the film looked like it had all the colours drained from it and the locations were rich with period detail. The costumes were also lavish. The production values are actually quite excellent for an unknown German film. Unfortunately the screenplay isn't.

Faust isn't the most boring film I've ever seen, but then again you're reading a review written by a poor chap who has sat through such cinematic stimulation as Import/Export and Uzak. Two of the most boring films on the planet. Faust doesn't come close to the level of boredom they caused, but if you've seen them then you'll know that that really isn't saying a lot. Faust is boring and has little plot or characters that capture your attention. It does have sporadic moments of creativity and surrealism, but there aren't enough of these moments to warrant it being watched. I think it's a film strictly for pseuds. Unfortunately I failed to find it intense, powerful or life changing. Ironically Faust is a film with no soul, or perhaps that's the point. I don't know. All I know is that I wasted £6.

Best watched late on a sleepless night when you feel at the end of your tether. Like a nightmare that I couldn't wake from, this and a glass of scotch took the edge off my own bewildered existence. It needs several viewings to begin to get to the bottom of whatever it is trying to say about fallen man, but I am sure it is not a message of hope. As a piece of filmmaking I found it hard to fault. It transported me to an unknown, lost world that suggested Dark Ages Germany seen through an alchemist's green bottle spun faster and faster on some infernal machine. I am unlikely to forget this world even if I may be reluctant, for now, to revisit it. On another dark night perhaps.

Well, I have to admit that I've never been much of a fan of Sokurov's work. Rather on the contrary, I've considered all of his films which I've seen fairly tedious. But, as in the case of 'Russian Ark', one cannot deny his talent for opulent visuals and creative camera movement. However, how one could possibly deem this very loose adaptation of 'Faust' laudable is completely beyond me - because there are far superior film versions of this well-known story, first and foremost among them Murnau's.

What has always bothered me about Sokurov is derogatory treatment of female characters and use of superfluous or gruesome details - in this case best exemplified by the opening shot of a man's penis, then revealed to be that of a corpse in the process of being harvested by Faust for research. Or a totally unnecessary scene involving two drunken Russians. All women here are mere furniture, especially Gretchen, who hardly appears enough to merit even a reduction to an object of desire. Instead, there are endless interchanges between a bewildered, impoverished Faust and a less-than-impressive Mephisto, who is portrayed more as a salesman than a demon, thereby depriving the tale of much of its zest, and unduly limiting the means of expression of the actor - definitely the worst Mephistopheles I've ever seen on either screen or stage.

What I find absolutely unforgivable though is the altered ending, which takes excessive liberty with the tale as it is - and I'm not talking about Goethe, even though it is already quite preposterous to title the film as an adaptation of Goethe's Faust, and then but quote a few lines from the play. While art, of course, is at liberty to interpret the lore of culture freely, one cannot let Romeo and Juliet live, for instance, because then the whole point of the story is gone.

That is pretty much what Sokurov does to Faust here - for the sake of demonstrating his ability as a director, he changes the entire story to the extent of being unidentifiable, with no regard to the audience, or just about any definition of taste. Unfortunately, such creative sadism meets with the masochism of entrenched festival juries, preferring the old and tiresome over the young and relevant, which to me is about the only explanation how this self-indulgent, boring, dreadful piece could win the Golden Lion - notwithstanding the fact that this award has already lost much of its luster.

"Wohin?" "Dahin" The movie opens with the Herr Doktor cutting open a rotting corpse, declaring that he has looked for man's soul and has found that there is none. The scene is a microcosm of the film's despairing vision of modern man's immorality, descended into seeing all as mere material. In this world, the old moral code remains only in debased form: good does not exist but evil does. The film's aesthetic is ruled by filth, and everyone's body seems either decaying or malformed (bodies are all they are). And so too has Faust's famous bargain with the devil been seriously downgraded. Goethe's Faust was foolish but noble: he signed his soul away for knowledge, a mirage of human perfectibility. Sokurov's Faust signs his off without so much as a second thought - and for what? So little! A bit of money and a bit of ass. All here is only bestial (and fleeting) pleasure. There is no longer even a dream of something better. All are selfish, mean and disgusting, loving no one, not even themselves. The film is a nightmarish verdict on modern man: he has given up the better part of himself to live like an animal, and in the end does not even realize what he has done. We the viewer are left to wonder whether there ever was a 'better part' of us at all. However, the one character who seems to recognize the fallen state of things is Faust's father, perhaps an indication that the old generation could still see the devil for what he is. Hardly hopeful, but maybe a sign that modern man's crass materialism and selfishness is not the whole story.

First off, the film (video) looks horrid. I'm not saying that this is a result of incompetence. No, rather, the filmmakers clearly wanted their movie to look like this. Why? No idea. There isn't a decent shot to be seen. They also chose to use a distorting lens for long stretches. Unbelievably, that choice made the movie look even worse then it already had.

This is the second film I've seen of this filmmaker's and, most likely, the last. At least, "Moloch" looked okay. There were even a few decent shots. Not here.

Opening the film with a long, dreary autopsy scene was probably not the wisest choice. Beware!

it is not the best Faust adaptation. the form is different, the Sokurov ambition to create his story is obvious, the images are pieces from same material of others movies by him. but it is far to be the worst adaptation. short, the lead character of film is the director. and this character is Mephisto in clothes of Faust. the dark scenes, the atmosphere, the dialogs, the Georgian young man or Isolda Dychauk as Renaissance Madonna/Margareta, the first scene and the last, each is letter of a letter who desire say more than its text. a profound film and not uninspired game with a delicate subject. good performance, interesting presence of Hanna Schygulla, smart manner to translate to present the Goethe drama. but , more than philosophic movie, it is a too complicated labyrinth. the ambition is to impress with entire force. but something missing. maybe, the soul.

"Faust" of the living classic of Russian cinema Aleksandr Sokurov is the best film adaptation of the last decade and the biggest festival success of Russia in the last decade. Black and white drama about the relationship between Faust and Margarita according to the Goethe's eternal poem of the same name.

Too willful. It starts with the technical/cinematic things: I certainly have nothing against films in 4:3 format, but what is this "frame" with the rounded corners for? Should a kind of "Super 8 atmosphere" be created here? Then these distortions or filters. It's hard for me to see that as artistically effective or valuable.

Also the action, the dialogues, the narration...everything seems too theatrical and pregnant with meaning. A successful Faust film adaptation has to be more natural for me, especially since not inconsiderable changes were made to the plot.

I have little or nothing to do with the story that is being told here.

Tiglon's DVD release of Faust comes with a booklet featuring essays by two prominent Turkish film critics, offering insights into both the film and its director, Aleksandr Sokurov.

In Russia, many critics hail Sokurov as the new Tarkovsky. As someone who admires both directors, I disagree. They are distinct cinematic voices, and labeling Sokurov as "the new Tarkovsky" feels like a disservice to his unique artistry. Sokurov has his own cinematic language and is a masterful filmmaker in his own right.

Some call him the Dostoevsky of Russian cinema, and considering this film, they might have a point. Whether adapting literary works or crafting original stories, Sokurov's characters often seem to emerge from the depths of Dostoevsky's world.

For me, Faust was a nightmarish book. It was assigned reading at Deutsche Schule Istanbul, and German has always been a language I've kept at arm's length.

Faust's perilous journey, driven by dissatisfaction with his life and a yearning for the unknown, becomes an unsettling experience for the audience. His hunger for knowledge and the unseen, his desire for the unlived, and his obsession with the unpossessed lead him down a path guided by the Devil. We witness a man, consumed by his quest to locate the soul within the body, ultimately lose his own soul. We watch as a man who once murmured, "In the beginning was the word," succumbs to the Devil's influence and declares, "In the beginning was the deed." We see a man who chases the radiant beauty of Margarete, a symbol of life's splendor, only to drag her into darkness and ultimately vanish into the abyss of the unknown. A crucial detail in this journey is that Mephistopheles (the film's equivalent of Mephisto) never forces Faust's hand. He presents the possibilities and leaves the decision to Faust. In this sense, Faust, who sells his soul to the devil for what he could have, becomes perhaps even more frightening than the Devil himself, as he reveals to us the potential for our own damnation.

The opening scene signals that this won't be a sunny cinematic experience. The chaotic, dark, and eerie atmosphere gradually seeps into our consciousness through the sets, costumes, lighting, and colors. The theatrical scenes and challenging dialogues pay homage to the source material until the very last frame.

Throughout the film, the power of a line spoken by Faust early on, "The god who shakes me inside is powerless outside of me," never diminishes but instead intensifies.

The decors are beautiful, but the acting is horrible. I simply do not understand why the people interact with each other in this manner. They walk like there's no room to move. (You'll understand it when you see it.) Every time a conversation occurs (constantly)it is disrupted by background noise, with only one purpose, to annoy the viewer. Everybody who has read Goethe's Faust will be shocked. This adaptation does not even come close.

I love movies, I truly do. Even when I don't like a movie I can still understand the appeal. But not with Faust. This was the first time I walked out of the cinema during a film.