Synopsis
A doctor in early 19th-century Germany becomes infatuated with the sister of a man he unintentionally killed and bargains with the Devil incarnate to conjure their union in exchange for his soul.
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Cast
- Johannes ZeilerHeinrich Faust
- Anton AdasinskyMoneylender
- Isolda DychaukMargarete
- Georg FriedrichWagner
- Hanna SchygullaMoneylender's Wife
- Florian BrücknerValentin
- Antje LewaldMargarete's Mother
- Maxim MehmetValentins Freund
- Oliver BootzValentins Freund
- Andreas SchmidtValentins Freund
Recommendations
- 100
The A.V. Club
It manages to convey a desire for power in abstract terms, divorced from material gain or a need to be admired. What’s more, it manages to do it with energy and a good deal of weird humor. - 80
Total Film
Alexander Sokurov’s riff on Goethe’s tragedy is a bewildering but blazingly styled fever-dream epic. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
This is far from a dull, academic work and the fast-paced talk is matched by swiftly changing scenes full of vibrant visuals. Life bubbles out of each frame in a grungy, foul-smelling rush. - 80
Village Voice
Faust is not your great-granddaddy's selling-your-soul fable, but something new, a dreamy immersion into the messiness of myth, where hubris and desire can get lost in the chaos of time and retelling. - 80
Time Out
Often, Faust plays like a lost cousin to Andrei Tarkovsky’s haunted Stalker (1979), catnip for the slow-and-low crowd. Settle in, because this requires your charity, but you’ll dream it all back up the next night. - 75
Portland Oregonian
As usual, the director is a wizard at camera movement and more than willing to plunge his audience into unpleasantness. - 63
Slant Magazine
Though its ballast of jokes and spectacle are formidable, it often lurches about at a remote, enigmatic distance - 60
The Guardian
This Faust is part bad dream, part music-less opera: sometimes muted and numb, though with hallucinatory flashes of fear.
