At the very beginning of Faust, the camera plunges from the sky, descending to a small house in a rural town, and ends up zooming on the penis of a corpse dissected in an autopsy. In his retelling of one of the most famous tales of western literature, director Sokurov plays with symbols, juxtaposing spiritual and worldly, sacred and profane, water (associated with Margarete) and earth, sterility and fertility.
See also how the film plays with space: indoor locations are overcrowded and claustrophobic, the town a labyrinth of mud and bricks, the uncanny forest surrounding it resembles Doré's illustrations for Dante's Comedy. Only when Margarete appears - and at the very end - sets become less oppressive. The result is an insidious, subtly disquieting movie.
The occasional heavy-handed, distracting symbolism (the egg, the homunculus...) is redeemed by magnificent performances by the three leads. As Faust, Johannes Zeiler is exceptional in his vivid humanity, torn between sensuality and spirituality; as the object of his passion, lovely Isolda Dychauk gives a star-making turn. Anton Adasinsky as the "Moneylender" (the name Mephistopheles is never mentioned) is unctuous, porcine, whiny and malevolent, in a performance which defies all expectations for this kind of character and is all the more unsettling for that.
8/10
See also how the film plays with space: indoor locations are overcrowded and claustrophobic, the town a labyrinth of mud and bricks, the uncanny forest surrounding it resembles Doré's illustrations for Dante's Comedy. Only when Margarete appears - and at the very end - sets become less oppressive. The result is an insidious, subtly disquieting movie.
The occasional heavy-handed, distracting symbolism (the egg, the homunculus...) is redeemed by magnificent performances by the three leads. As Faust, Johannes Zeiler is exceptional in his vivid humanity, torn between sensuality and spirituality; as the object of his passion, lovely Isolda Dychauk gives a star-making turn. Anton Adasinsky as the "Moneylender" (the name Mephistopheles is never mentioned) is unctuous, porcine, whiny and malevolent, in a performance which defies all expectations for this kind of character and is all the more unsettling for that.
8/10