Aleksandr Sokurov's tetralogy of power, previously dedicated to real biographical subjects (Lenin, Hitler, Hirohito), unexpectedly concludes with a legendary fictitious man: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust. The Russian director has loosely—one might even say wildly, fervently—adapted Goethe's play with a barely contained gleeful passion.
The mise en scène breaks out of the fetid, murmuring stasis so evocative of Molokh (1999), Taurus (2001) and The Sun (2005) and is freed to wander in a malleable, Ruizian manner around a sumptuously dirty and worn old German town of stone and earth. After beginning with a Forrest Gump-like descent of the camera from mirrored heavens, flying down to the grimy, sprawling town, the second shot after this luxurious, fantastical opening introduces Faust (Johannes Zeiler) via the decomposing ash-purple penis of a corpse he is dissecting in poverty and philosophical inquiry. With no money for food (let alone gravediggers), the doctor first approaches and then is chased,...
The mise en scène breaks out of the fetid, murmuring stasis so evocative of Molokh (1999), Taurus (2001) and The Sun (2005) and is freed to wander in a malleable, Ruizian manner around a sumptuously dirty and worn old German town of stone and earth. After beginning with a Forrest Gump-like descent of the camera from mirrored heavens, flying down to the grimy, sprawling town, the second shot after this luxurious, fantastical opening introduces Faust (Johannes Zeiler) via the decomposing ash-purple penis of a corpse he is dissecting in poverty and philosophical inquiry. With no money for food (let alone gravediggers), the doctor first approaches and then is chased,...
- 11/15/2013
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
This ponderous movie is regarded by its writer-director, the talented Russian mystic Alexander Sokurov, as the concluding section of a quartet of films on the subject of the corrupting effects of power, following on from his biographical studies of Hitler (Moloch), Lenin (Taurus) and the emperor Hirohito (The Sun). It won the Golden Lion at Venice last year but is a dull affair, made in German, set in 18th-century central Europe, shot in the Czech Republic and Iceland. It has the impoverished, lugubrious scholar Faust pursuing the meaning of life and taking up with Mauritius, a grotesquely repellent version of Mephistopheles. Mauritius works as the town's pawnbroker and moneylender and reveals during one of his pointless romps with Faust to have his penis attached to his backside. After much rambling talk, Faust sells his soul to Mauritius in order to have sex with the local beauty, Margarete. He signs the...
- 5/12/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Sokurov's version of Goethe's tragedy is part bad dream, part music-less opera, with hallucinatory flashes of fear
Aleksandr Sokurov's Faust is a version of Goethe's tragedy that won the Golden Lion at last year's Venice film festival; it is being presented as the last part of a "cinematic tetralogy" with three earlier films, Moloch (1999) about Hitler, Taurus (2001) about Lenin and The Sun (2005) about Hirohito. Generally, when directors claim this, it is a transparent ploy to shift the back-catalogue DVDs, but this surely can't be true of such a distinguished film-maker, and there is some dramatic interest in linking fictional Faust with three historical figures, each pondering power, destiny, heaven and hell.
The Austrian actor Johannes Zeiler is Faust, dissecting grisly corpses in a vaguely delineated central Europe in what looks like the 16th century of Marlowe's Faustus. He is brooding over the location of the soul (perhaps...
Aleksandr Sokurov's Faust is a version of Goethe's tragedy that won the Golden Lion at last year's Venice film festival; it is being presented as the last part of a "cinematic tetralogy" with three earlier films, Moloch (1999) about Hitler, Taurus (2001) about Lenin and The Sun (2005) about Hirohito. Generally, when directors claim this, it is a transparent ploy to shift the back-catalogue DVDs, but this surely can't be true of such a distinguished film-maker, and there is some dramatic interest in linking fictional Faust with three historical figures, each pondering power, destiny, heaven and hell.
The Austrian actor Johannes Zeiler is Faust, dissecting grisly corpses in a vaguely delineated central Europe in what looks like the 16th century of Marlowe's Faustus. He is brooding over the location of the soul (perhaps...
- 5/11/2012
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Aleksandr Sokurov’s four-part meditation on the interplay between power and evil comes to a close with Faust, a challenging, dense take on Goethe’s famed text. With the previous three parts focusing on the travails of historical figures – Moloch on Hitler, Taurus on Lenin and The Sun on Hirohito – Faust might seem like a peculiar post-script, especially when it unfolds like a spiritual prequel, revealing just a little about what might have driven these men to unthinkable behaviours.
Sokurov’s film – which won the Golden Lion at least year’s Venice Film Festival – keenly plays fast and loose with the source material, changing plot structure, character machinations and location, rendering the project, for better and for worse, very much his own. The core premise of course remains the same; the well-meaning if frustrated Doctor Faust (Johannes Zeiler) visits a cantankerous moneylender (Anton Adasinsky), and after signing in his own blood,...
Aleksandr Sokurov’s four-part meditation on the interplay between power and evil comes to a close with Faust, a challenging, dense take on Goethe’s famed text. With the previous three parts focusing on the travails of historical figures – Moloch on Hitler, Taurus on Lenin and The Sun on Hirohito – Faust might seem like a peculiar post-script, especially when it unfolds like a spiritual prequel, revealing just a little about what might have driven these men to unthinkable behaviours.
Sokurov’s film – which won the Golden Lion at least year’s Venice Film Festival – keenly plays fast and loose with the source material, changing plot structure, character machinations and location, rendering the project, for better and for worse, very much his own. The core premise of course remains the same; the well-meaning if frustrated Doctor Faust (Johannes Zeiler) visits a cantankerous moneylender (Anton Adasinsky), and after signing in his own blood,...
- 5/11/2012
- by Shaun Munro
- Obsessed with Film
★★★★☆ Making its way to UK cinemas eight months on from its Golden Lion win at last year's Venice Film Festival, Alexander Sokurov's Faust (2011) has lost little of its enigmatic zeal in the interim period. Critical opinion has been somewhat divided on this final chapter in the Russian director's tetralogy (which includes 1999's Moloch, 2000's Taurus and 2005's The Sun), yet for all its over-ambition and debatable inaccessibility, this unique take on Goethe's classic tale remains one of the most mesmeric, hypnotic cinematic experiences of the last twelve months.
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- 5/9/2012
- by CineVue
- CineVue
The retrospective Aleksandr Sokurov: A Spiritual Voice opens on Thursday at BFI Southbank in London and runs through December 30. For Steve Rose, who meets Sokurov for the Guardian, "overshadowing his entire career is his 'tetralogy of power,' a magnum opus conceived in 1980 and only completed this year. The first three films focused on 20th-century leaders — Hitler in 1999's Moloch, Lenin in 2001's Taurus, and Emperor Hirohito in 2005's The Sun — pinning them down in isolated, almost abstract domestic situations. The final movie, a loose adaptation of Goethe's Faust, is almost a complete departure…. Why make three movies on historical subjects and one on a fictional one? 'Why do you think?' I suggest Faust is a sort of prequel to the other three. 'Maybe,' he nods. Or is it that the first three deal with the death of power, whereas Faust addresses its acquisition? 'But he never gets this power,...
- 11/15/2011
- MUBI
He is the great Russian director who once shot a whole film in a single take. Aleksandr Sokurov talks to Steve Rose about Soviet spies, fallen dictators – and how he got Putin to fund his latest work
At the end of a challenging conversation that, conducted via a translator, strains my intellectual faculties to their limit but barely flexes his, Aleksandr Sokurov makes an astounding statement. "I'm a very literary person, not so much a cinematographic person. I don't really like cinema very much."
Pardon? He doesn't like cinema very much? That's like hearing David Attenborough say he's never really liked animals. Here is a man who was persecuted by the communists for his films; the man who gave us a miraculous feature conducted in one single, unbroken shot, 2002's Russian Ark; the man who is the custodian of Russia's great cinematic heritage. What would he have done if he did like cinema?...
At the end of a challenging conversation that, conducted via a translator, strains my intellectual faculties to their limit but barely flexes his, Aleksandr Sokurov makes an astounding statement. "I'm a very literary person, not so much a cinematographic person. I don't really like cinema very much."
Pardon? He doesn't like cinema very much? That's like hearing David Attenborough say he's never really liked animals. Here is a man who was persecuted by the communists for his films; the man who gave us a miraculous feature conducted in one single, unbroken shot, 2002's Russian Ark; the man who is the custodian of Russia's great cinematic heritage. What would he have done if he did like cinema?...
- 11/15/2011
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
This year's AFI Fest opens this evening in Los Angeles with Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar, closes on November 10 with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's The Adventures of Tintin and, as the Playlist is reporting today, the festival will host the world premiere of Steven Soderbergh's Haywire on Sunday: "Haywire marks the big screen debut of Mma fighter Gina Carano, who takes the lead in the gritty spy thriller written by Lem Dobbs (The Limey) about Mallory Kane, a black ops soldier on a mission of revenge after she's double crossed by one of her teammates. As usual, Soderbergh has assembled a crackerjack ensemble that includes Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton, Michael Angarano, Matthieu Kassovitz and Antonio Banderas… 'People really get hit in this film and they get hurt,' the director told us this summer." Update: The Playlist's headline's been tweaked; Haywire...
- 11/4/2011
- MUBI
68th Venice Film Festival Wrap Up
The 68th Venice Film Festival has wrapped up, with Aleksandr Sokurov's film Faust taking the top prize of the Golden Lion for Best Picture. The Russian director was given the award by the head of the year's jury Darren Aranofsky. This film is the fourth in the director's Goethe’s classic tragedy tetrology, following Molokh, Telets and The Sun. Faust however is the first in thet tetrology about a mythical person. His others films Moloch, was about Hitler, Taurus, about Lenin and The Sun, about Emperor Hirohito.
Thanks for reading We Got This Covered...
The 68th Venice Film Festival has wrapped up, with Aleksandr Sokurov's film Faust taking the top prize of the Golden Lion for Best Picture. The Russian director was given the award by the head of the year's jury Darren Aranofsky. This film is the fourth in the director's Goethe’s classic tragedy tetrology, following Molokh, Telets and The Sun. Faust however is the first in thet tetrology about a mythical person. His others films Moloch, was about Hitler, Taurus, about Lenin and The Sun, about Emperor Hirohito.
Thanks for reading We Got This Covered...
- 9/11/2011
- by Blake Dew
- We Got This Covered
Aleksandr Sokurov loosely—one might even say wildly, fervently–adapts Goethe’s Faust with barely contained, gleeful passion to conclude his tetralogy of power (previously, all real biographical subjects: Lenin, Hitler, Hirohito).
The mise-en-scène breaks out of the fetid, murmuring stasis so evocative of those three films and is freed to wander in a malleable, Ruiz-like manner around a sumptuously dirty and worn old German town of stone and earth. After opening first with a Forest Gump-like descent of the camera from mirrored heavens flying down to the grimy, sprawling town, the second shot after this luxurious, fantastical shot introduces Faust (Johannes Zeiler) via the decomposing ash-purple penis of a corpse he is dissecting in poverty and philosophical inquiry. With no money for food let alone gravediggers, the man first approaches and then is chased, accompanied and pursued by (and later pursues himself) the town’s money-lender (Anton Adasinsky)—the film's devil.
The mise-en-scène breaks out of the fetid, murmuring stasis so evocative of those three films and is freed to wander in a malleable, Ruiz-like manner around a sumptuously dirty and worn old German town of stone and earth. After opening first with a Forest Gump-like descent of the camera from mirrored heavens flying down to the grimy, sprawling town, the second shot after this luxurious, fantastical shot introduces Faust (Johannes Zeiler) via the decomposing ash-purple penis of a corpse he is dissecting in poverty and philosophical inquiry. With no money for food let alone gravediggers, the man first approaches and then is chased, accompanied and pursued by (and later pursues himself) the town’s money-lender (Anton Adasinsky)—the film's devil.
- 9/9/2011
- MUBI
By Mike Collett-White
Venice, Italy (Reuters) - Acclaimed Russian director Alexander Sokurov returns to the theme of corrupting power in his new film "Faust," the fourth and final part of a series on the topic but the first to depict a fictional character.
The first three movies in the tetralogy were "Moloch" (1999) about Adolf Hitler, "Taurus" (2000) about Vladimir Lenin and "The Sun" (2005) about Emperor Hirohito.
Faust, which has its world premiere at the Venice film festival on Thursday, is loosely based on German writer Goethe's take on the myth about a man who sells his soul to the devil.
It is one of 23 movies in the main competition lineup, and eligible for prizes including the coveted Golden Lion for best film at the closing ceremony on Saturday.
In Sokurov's Faust, the Mephistopheles character is convincingly portrayed by Anton Adasinsky as a creepy, old, grotesque moneylender who struggles to maintain his grip on Faust.
Venice, Italy (Reuters) - Acclaimed Russian director Alexander Sokurov returns to the theme of corrupting power in his new film "Faust," the fourth and final part of a series on the topic but the first to depict a fictional character.
The first three movies in the tetralogy were "Moloch" (1999) about Adolf Hitler, "Taurus" (2000) about Vladimir Lenin and "The Sun" (2005) about Emperor Hirohito.
Faust, which has its world premiere at the Venice film festival on Thursday, is loosely based on German writer Goethe's take on the myth about a man who sells his soul to the devil.
It is one of 23 movies in the main competition lineup, and eligible for prizes including the coveted Golden Lion for best film at the closing ceremony on Saturday.
In Sokurov's Faust, the Mephistopheles character is convincingly portrayed by Anton Adasinsky as a creepy, old, grotesque moneylender who struggles to maintain his grip on Faust.
- 9/8/2011
- by Reuters
- Huffington Post
Maestro: Aleksandr Sokruov
Known For: critically acclaimed Russian art films
Influences: Tarkovsky, Tarkovsky and... well Tarkovsky
Masterpieces: Russian Ark
Disasters: none
Better than you remember: none, or all
Box Office: over 2 mil for Russian Ark
Art cinema is alive and well (and not as difficult to watch as the naysayers keep naysaying), and the lovers of such cinema are thankful that rather prolific Russian Aleksandr Sokurov has reached a point of notability where those of us who live in the western world can anticipate all of his films getting a release date (now if we could only do something about that back catalog.) Sokurov, a long time pupil and friend to contemplative, languorous, spiritual poet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, the man who brought us Solaris, continues his mentor's work on a regular basis, churning out films that utilize the camera, and occasionally video to capture a unique perspective on the human condition,...
Known For: critically acclaimed Russian art films
Influences: Tarkovsky, Tarkovsky and... well Tarkovsky
Masterpieces: Russian Ark
Disasters: none
Better than you remember: none, or all
Box Office: over 2 mil for Russian Ark
Art cinema is alive and well (and not as difficult to watch as the naysayers keep naysaying), and the lovers of such cinema are thankful that rather prolific Russian Aleksandr Sokurov has reached a point of notability where those of us who live in the western world can anticipate all of his films getting a release date (now if we could only do something about that back catalog.) Sokurov, a long time pupil and friend to contemplative, languorous, spiritual poet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, the man who brought us Solaris, continues his mentor's work on a regular basis, churning out films that utilize the camera, and occasionally video to capture a unique perspective on the human condition,...
- 9/23/2010
- by Robert
- FilmExperience
A film that came out in 2005 to rave reviews during the Berlin Film Festival and is finally out on DVD here in the U.S. 5 years later sounds like an adventure all its own, but this is what happened to Aleksandr Sokurov’s ‘The Sun’. Add to that already ardent fact is it is a film about the Japanese dictator Emperor Hirohito and his last days in power before Japan surrendered to the Allies in World War II, mostly set in the basement bunker of the Imperial Palace.
Hirohito (Issey Ogata) is a bit insane and suffers from dementia. He needs constant reminding of his divinity (being one with God was why the people believed he was ordained in the first place) and he’s almost childlike, needing servants to dress him and they are shocked to see this once worshipped ‘deity’ believes he’s not “Tenno” (Heavenly Emperor), but...
Hirohito (Issey Ogata) is a bit insane and suffers from dementia. He needs constant reminding of his divinity (being one with God was why the people believed he was ordained in the first place) and he’s almost childlike, needing servants to dress him and they are shocked to see this once worshipped ‘deity’ believes he’s not “Tenno” (Heavenly Emperor), but...
- 7/13/2010
- by James McCormick
- CriterionCast
I don't normally associate remakes, trilogies, biopics or adaptions with films from the Croisette, but this year we could receive a little bit of all four if Aleksandr Sokurov's Faust, Kornel Mundruczo's The Frankenstein Project, Wong Kar-Wai's The Grand Master and Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid make the cut. Here are the second batch of predictions. - I don't normally associate remakes, trilogies, biopics or adaptions with films from the Croisette, but this year we could receive a little bit of all four if Aleksandr Sokurov's Faust, Kornel Mundruczo's The Frankenstein Project, Wong Kar-Wai's The Grand Master and Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid make the cut. Here are the second batch of predictions. Fair Game – Doug LimanBill Pohlad's River Road might show up with pair of films - both have Sean Penn on board. Like Eastwood, the French have an appreciation for Penn - who was a...
- 2/18/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
Not a remake of Murnau's 1926 film, but the closing chapter in Sokurov's grouping of four films under the theme of corruption is an absolute must for film snobs. Having only seen three of his works, I can't say I'm much of an expert on the filmmaker, but the chosen subject should be an interesting figure to highlight in Sokurov commonly known aesthetic that draws upon nature's surroundings and natural light to add descriptive layers to his characters. - #43. Faust Director/Writer: Aleksandr SokurovProducers: Andrey Sigle (Alexandra)Distributor: Rights Available. The Gist: This is the fourth and final film in the corrupting effects of power after Hitler ("Moloch," 1999), Vladimir Lenin ("Taurus," 2000) and Japanese emperor Hirohito ("The Sun," 2004). Inspired by the German legend of a man who makes a pact with the devil in return for knowledge, and drawing on works by Goethe and Thomas Mann, Sokurov's "Faust" aims to draw...
- 2/3/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
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