Faust (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2012)

[swo17]

Unnerving, nauseating, meandering, blasphemous, festering, bloated, goofy, perverse, and one of the most beautiful looking films ever made. Discuss.

[J Adams]

zany

It was in my Top 10 for 2011.

[swo17]

It played several festivals and opened in a few countries last year but I classified it as 2012 because it only opened in Russia and Germany this year. It's out now on Blu in Italy (no English subs). Cinema Guild may be releasing it in the U.S., depending on how much you want to read into this post.

[Grand Illusion]

If Cinema Guild brings this to the US, coupled with Turin Horse, they will have immediately jumped up to my top three distributors.

[warren oates]

So swo, I take it you were lucky enough to catch this at a festival? I'm totally jealous.

Sokurov is probably my favorite living filmmaker for so many reasons. Like Werner Herzog, he's prolific and equally proficient in fiction and documentary, experimental and narrative film, features, shorts and every length in between. He seems to proceed with utter fearlessness about every next thing he makes, unconcerned about how it might relate to what he's done before. He's successfully experimented with so many different genres -- biopics, science fiction, chamber dramas, war films. He's single-handedly created a new subgenre of hybrid film that I'd call "the museum film" (Russian Ark, Stone, Elegy of Voyage) He's pushed the medium of cinema forward with bold experiments like the ones in Mother and Son and Russian Ark. And he's created a huge body of exceptionally creative and interesting literary adaptations of works by writers as different as the Strugatsky Brothers (Days of Eclispe), Flaubert (Save and Protect), George Bernard Shaw (Mournful Indifference), and all of 19th Century Russian literature (Whispering Pages).

So when I heard that the fourth installment in his tetralogy of power was going to be his version of Goethe's and Thomas Mann's Faust I was already jumping up and down. And when it got the Golden Lion at Venice by unanimous decision of such an eclectic international jury, it became my most anticipated film for this year.

I too home the Cinema Guild releases this film. They're a great company and are currently working on some of his excellent older features -- Save and Protect, Stone and possibly Whispering Pages too if they can find better elements somewhere. I hope they are able to go Blu on all these films too, because if anyone who makes smeary hazy films (looking at you domino!) ever deserved HD treatment it's Sokurov.

[FerdinandGriffon]

I went to my "Dynamic Top 10 of 2013" with determination this morning, only to be dismayed when I found that there was simply no room there for Sokurov's wondrous, hilarious, and imperial Faust. This has been a banner year for new movies, at least in terms of those that have received festival or theatrical distribution in New York City. As a good friend said to me the other day, it feels like we're living through a new 1960 or 1961. At the same time, I've never felt more pessimistic about the dire state of the industry. That so much superb work is being produced in spite of the constant failure and precipitous decline of the structures that are supposed to support it, is nothing short of miraculous.

[swo17]

There's a thread for Faust here--welcome to the club! I wasn't aware that this had just gotten a limited U.S. release. Hopefully that bodes well for a U.S. Blu-ray that fixes the problems with the Artificial Eye. Though I haven't heard of this distributor Leisure Time Features.

[FerdinandGriffon]

I went to my "Dynamic Top 10 of 2013" with determination this morning, only to be dismayed when I found that there was simply no room there for Sokurov's wondrous, hilarious, and imperial Faust. This has been a banner year for new movies, at least in terms of those that have received festival or theatrical distribution in New York City. As a good friend said to me the other day, it feels like we're living through a new 1960 or 1961. At the same time, I've never felt more pessimistic about the dire state of the industry. That so much superb work is being produced in spite of the constant failure and precipitous decline of the structures that are supposed to support it, is nothing short of miraculous.

There's a thread for Faust here--welcome to the club! I wasn't aware that this had just gotten a limited U.S. release. Hopefully that bodes well for a U.S. Blu-ray that fixes the problems with the Artificial Eye. Though I haven't heard of this distributor Leisure Time Features.

RE: discussion in "The Films of 2013":
Yeah, it's being shown on a very nice DCP, projected open matte with rounded corners showing. Though the subs kept on going about a second and a half out of synch intermittently through the screening. I'm not sure if that's a problem that can be solved by an alert projectionist or something locked into the DCP.

A complete sensual experience, that seems as intent on stimulating one's sense of smell and touch as one's sight. A fully-formed world, crafted to a seemingly infinite degree of detail, rivaling Murnau, though more reminiscent of Sunrise to me than Faust. The camera never stops waltzing with equal parts precision and playfulness, even in close-up, and Delbonnel is one of the only DPs working who employs the current fad of extreme color-correction with any sense of purpose. Perhaps the biggest revelation for me was Anton Adasinsky as the "moneylender". He is apparently quite a prominent figure is Russian theater (and post-punk music!) but it's a crime that he hasn't appeared in more films; I don't think I'll ever get his character's beautiful, insane gait out of my head.