Faust (1994)

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Jan Svankmajer is becoming one of my favorite filmmakers. His Alice movie introduced me to a new world of cinematic animation and surrealism. And now Faust takes me further into that world. Again, he has chosen to adapt one of my favorite books, Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus.This movie has less stop-motion animation than Alice, but it has more surreal imagery. Again Svankmajer shows a talent to create scenes full of dread, dark humor and mystery. Characters quote from the original play, sets change around instantly, opera invades the movie halfway in, men turn into puppets, plasticine creatures become human. This is just a sample of what anyone can find in the movie. And the art direction is great: the sets are grimy, dusty, decadent. It looks like it takes place in a very old world.Once again the filmmaker isn't concerned with realism. This is fiction, and he knows it. When puppets show up, he closes in on the hands moving them. Other times he shows an audience watching the play within the movie, and sometimes Faustus can't even distinguish which is which.This is a great surrealist movie, perhaps superior to Alice. Anyone who enjoys Marlowe's play or a good strange movie should get a kick out of this.

Like "Alice in Wonderland", the story of Faust has been almost infinitely adapted to various interpretations based on the nationalist and socialistic concerns of the time, making it perfect material for Svankmajer to play with. In terms of Svankmajer's other work, this fits more closely to his 1970 short "Don Sanche", but overall it's the most populated movie of his I've seen thus far. Most of his shorts are rather hermetic, with story lines as splintered as his characters: "Alice" is kept entirely in the young girl's head, "Lunacy" is trapped in an insane asylum, and his shorts are either devoid of people or the very few characters that are there react to their absence. Here, he tries a little bit to provide a world populated with extras and background, but it isn't long before he removes the action (once again) to an abandoned theatre wherein he can get his puppets and claymation to work.Instead of a straight-up adaptation, Svankmajer plays it loose and surreal, introducing multiple layers of narrative and letting them dance with each other. This approach to storytelling is matched by the mixed media he includes with life-sized puppets, stop-motion animation, claymation, and live action, sometimes at the same time, sometimes taking over each other, and sometimes giving the floor to another. It's interesting that the primary recognizable Faust narrative is contained in puppetry, meaning that even behind the metaphysical story of the fateful struggle over a man's soul are unnamed human hands authoring the tale. On one hand, an argument could be made that the story doesn't really even start until the second half of the movie, meaning it could have been cut to about 45 minutes in length; on the other hand, like any serious animator's work, it's really much more about movement, and it never really drags.Of all of Svankmajer's work, this is one that seems like previous knowledge of him would be helpful going into. A lot of the symbolism, such as all of the food that gets eaten, the disembodied leg, the clay baby, and the close-ups of mouths are all much more easy to understand as shorthand to his usual concerns; I feel like had I not recognized them as such, I could have gotten bogged down trying to figure it all out and the movie would have been a bit more confusing. Remember that this story begins with a cracked egg.There are, indeed, many amazing and memorable scenes. The scene in the dressing room where Faust converses to an always metamorphosing Mephistopheles is really where all of the imagery and themes come together in their smoothest and most actualized forms--AND it's enough to disturb for weeks. I especially like the little angels and demons coming out of the big angels and demons; that scene also reflects the "consuming" nature of a lot of the earlier imagery.Anyway, definitely for die-hard fans of Svankmajer, though others might be a little put off, if not by its imagery, then by its pacing.--PolarisDiB

This is not a movie that strikes the first time viewer. It asks for some former knowledge. It mainly relies on the epic Faust by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, but since monologue and dialog have been very rare in this one, symbols are probably easier to read if the book has been previously read. For example, the empty egg in the bread which actually contains one's soul according to pagan mythology could be overlooked.This is as far as the script is concerned. The directory, however, is done by one of the greatest and most influential stop-motion-animation masters and puppeteers, greatly appreciated by the well known Quay Brothers (see The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer) as well as the others. This means that very imaginative and expressive combination of animation, string puppets theater and acting is expected.When one thinks about the story of Faust, the question that often pops in one's head is what would be the price on my soul. Faust traded his soul for the absolute understanding which in the end he does not receive. However, the moment of gaining control over his destiny is shown so simply and yet so powerfully – the moment of detaching strings, the question that remains is who was pulling Faust's strings in the moment he decided to sell his soul. That was the decision he made former to his strings detaching. The movie swarms with this sort of fractions that trigger bursts of reflections and that's why this movie won't put you to sleep. On the other hand, if you are sleepy go watch something else, this movie deserves attention.

"Faust" is a wonderful blend of real-time and stop-motion storytelling by a master of the surreal. An apparently ordinary everyman is led by curiosity into a dilapidated building which turns out to be a strange blend of alchemical laboratory, theater, and puppeteer's workshop. Suddenly, the man finds himself becoming the legendary Dr. Faust, selling his soul to the devil in exchange for magical powers.Jan Svankmajer is the true sorcerer here. He blends stage sets with real locations and seven-foot puppets with live actors, making magic of it all.The film has been dubbed for English audiences, but there has perhaps never been a less obtrusive film dub. The voice performances are excellent and actually add to the surreal quality of the film.