Faust (2011)

Expected more

Beautiful, moving film.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

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.

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...

I'm learning German, and that's why I went to see this Russian film. I read in Wikipedia about the story, which I found quite interesting. I'm a regular movie goer, I love all kinds of movies, and I don't believe in movies for selected audiences... I just hate bad movies that come along and try to make you feel like you didn't understand them. This is the worst movie ever, and not the worst movie in its kind, it's like you take all the movies ever made in the history of mankind, well: this is the worst, you can't make a worst movie than this one. It doesn't even fit the screen, it's most of the time out of focus, the script are random words without a meaning, the characters are just there without any reason whatsoever. I really believe the man who made this film should quit, the ones who participated in it, quit along with him. This man should start working in other areas may be cleaning cars or something like this. I hated every minute of this, and the six other people there hated it too. It makes you wanna stab your throat with the straw of your drink, it makes you hate the capability of seeing, it makes you wanna pay your ticket again so they stop the show. This one deserves a vote of -5. Really. Don't do it.

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.