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Faust

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Russia · 2011
2h 20m
Director Aleksandr Sokurov
Starring Johannes Zeiler, Anton Adasinsky, Isolda Dychauk, Georg Friedrich
Genre Fantasy, Drama

Faust is a 2011 Russian film directed by Alexander Sokurov. Set in the 19th century, it is a free interpretation of the Faust legend and its literary adaptations by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Thomas Mann. The dialogue is in German. The film won the Golden Lion at the 68th Venice International Film Festival.

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80

Total Film by

Alexander Sokurov’s riff on Goethe’s tragedy is a bewildering but blazingly styled fever-dream epic.

80

The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young

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.

100

The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

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

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

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.

80

Village Voice by Michael Atkinson

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.

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