The first three films in Sokurov's series are studies on great tyrants, Adolf Hitler (Molokh, 1999), Vladimir Lenin (Taurus, 2000) and Emperor Hirohito (The Sun, 2005) with uneven results, Molokh being the most successful. Sokurov has described all of them as great gamblers who lost the most important wagers of their lives. The literary character of Goethe's Faust seems out of place here. Sokurov says that Faust shows us that: "Evil is reproducible" and quoting Goethe "Unhappy people are dangerous." The link here is that all great tyrants were willing to sell their souls to obtain power. Faust examines the nature of this bargain with the devil.
Sokurov is never an easy view and this two and a half hour, expressionistic evocation of the Faust story demands much from its audience. This is not a re-telling of Goethe's original but rather an expression of what the director has called a reading between the lines, the "essence" of the Faust idea. What is the man Faust really like? What drives him? What kind of world does he inhabit? To answer these questions Sokurov constructs a totally unreal and distorted domain which looks medieval but is meant to be timeless.
In the opening scenes we see Faust in pursuit of knowledge, dissecting a rotting corpse with the penis, intestines and other bit prominently displayed. We already know that nothing is too nasty for Faust as long as it brings him knowledge and the power that knowledge bestows.
Visually the opening scenes set the look for the rest of the film which is a place of ugliness and decay. But there are moments of beauty, innocence and purity as when Faust encounters the beautiful Margarete played by Isolde Dychauk.
The dialogue, in German, is relentlessly wordy and theatrical. Austrian actor Johannes Zeiler plays the ever- hungry Dr Faust. His side-kick and assistant, played by Georg Friedrich, gives him a chance to constantly pour out dialogue on philosophical ideas like the existence of God and the location of the soul in the human body. There is nothing natural about this world. This is a stagey and artificial world where no one looks or acts naturally.
The devil enters the picture in the person of a money lender played by Anton Adasinsky. Faust tries to pawn some of his worthless goods which the money lender refuses and instead eventually tricks Faust into signing away his soul. But this is a sniveling and miserable creature of a devil seemingly without power or appeal. One wonders what Faust sees in him.
One of the film's most interesting scenes visually is when the devil, who has constantly denied that he is a devil, strips down to bathe in a pool with a group of washer women. His ancient, ugly and distorted body has no penis but a small penis-like organ on his backside which appears as if it might be a tail.
Faust eventually kills a soldier in a pub brawl who turns out to be the brother of the beautiful Margarete who Faust subsequently seduces. Even Margarete's beauty does not save her from corruption. DoP Bruno Debonnel has given the film a strange and crazily distorted look that lines up perfectly with Sokurov's ideas of Faust's world.
Sokurov packs a lot of philosophical and metaphysical questions into his unique take of Goethe's tale. No one can accuse the director of lacking intellectual depth or seriousness. For audiences able to keep up with the subtitles it should prove an interesting challenge.
Credits:
Director: Alexander Sokurov
Screenwriters: Alexander Sokurov, Marina Koreneva, Yuri Arabov
Director of photography: Bruno Delbonnel
Production: Proline Film in association with Mass Media Development and
Support Foundation, The Russian Cinema Fund
Cast: Johannes Zeiler, Anton Adasinsky, Isolde Dychauk, Georg Friedrich, Hanna Schygulla, Antje Leward, Florian Bruchner, Sigurdur Skulasson, Maxim Mehmet
Germany, Russia
