First off, the film (video) looks horrid. I'm not saying that this is a result of incompetence. No, rather, the filmmakers clearly wanted their movie to look like this. Why? No idea. There isn't a decent shot to be seen. They also chose to use a distorting lens for long stretches. Unbelievably, that choice made the movie look even worse then it already had. This is the second film I've seen of this filmmaker's and, most likely, the last. At least, "Moloch" looked okay. There were even a few decent shots. Not here. Opening the film with a long, dreary autopsy scene was probably not the wisest choice. Beware!

The way Sokurov treats this story makes it clear that his characters are all immersed in the day tot day doings, the earthly aspects of our lives, and it is hard or even impossible to escape. He brings it home to us, he gets us involved through his camera and sound, Faust becomes us. The first time I know of that this story was told in such a way that we can actually get inside Faust. Sokurov brings home some intriguing themes. Is Faust's soul maybe already missing from the start? What is our perception of Faust's hell and/or heaven, and how easy are we manipulated? We don't seem to need a lot of arguments and talking to win us over...

Well, I have to admit that I've never been much of a fan of Sokurov's work. Rather on the contrary, I've considered all of his films which I've seen fairly tedious. But, as in the case of 'Russian Ark', one cannot deny his talent for opulent visuals and creative camera movement. However, how one could possibly deem this very loose adaptation of 'Faust' laudable is completely beyond me - because there are far superior film versions of this well-known story, first and foremost among them Murnau's.What has always bothered me about Sokurov is derogatory treatment of female characters and use of superfluous or gruesome details - in this case best exemplified by the opening shot of a man's penis, then revealed to be that of a corpse in the process of being harvested by Faust for research. Or a totally unnecessary scene involving two drunken Russians. All women here are mere furniture, especially Gretchen, who hardly appears enough to merit even a reduction to an object of desire. Instead, there are endless interchanges between a bewildered, impoverished Faust and a less-than-impressive Mephisto, who is portrayed more as a salesman than a demon, thereby depriving the tale of much of its zest, and unduly limiting the means of expression of the actor - definitely the worst Mephistopheles I've ever seen on either screen or stage.What I find absolutely unforgivable though is the altered ending, which takes excessive liberty with the tale as it is - and I'm not talking about Goethe, even though it is already quite preposterous to title the film as an adaptation of Goethe's Faust, and then but quote a few lines from the play. While art, of course, is at liberty to interpret the lore of culture freely, one cannot let Romeo and Juliet live, for instance, because then the whole point of the story is gone.That is pretty much what Sokurov does to Faust here - for the sake of demonstrating his ability as a director, he changes the entire story to the extent of being unidentifiable, with no regard to the audience, or just about any definition of taste. Unfortunately, such creative sadism meets with the masochism of entrenched festival juries, preferring the old and tiresome over the young and relevant, which to me is about the only explanation how this self-indulgent, boring, dreadful piece could win the Golden Lion - notwithstanding the fact that this award has already lost much of its luster.

Sokurov is in a very different line of business from Goethe. No ennobling Faust's motives here, no redemption thanks to beauty or God's grace. The spectator is cast down onto a greasy, grimy and smelly small-town world where a cynical Dr. Faust states at once that he has not found any soul when dissecting people's bodies. Material problems suffocate his thirst for knowledge, so the tempting devil is the town's moneylender (a character who does not believe in eternal good but believes in eternal evil). Faust lets himself be seduced with only formal protest and does not care a jot about signing his soul away, when the deal is at last offered; but, as he keeps saying, "for this, you must give me more". Margarethe is not enough, meeting the dead is not enough, understanding nature's work is not enough; Faust goes on, apparently to nowhere. It is a visually straining experience, but also enticing in retrospect.