About film

Sokurov’s Faust is not a film adaptation of Goethe’s tragedy in the usual sense, but a reading of what remains between the lines. What is the colour of a world that gives rise to colossal ideas? What does it smell like? It is stuffy in Faust’s world: earthshaking plans are born in the cramped space where he scurries about. He is a thinker, a mouthpiece for ideas, a transmitter of words, a schemer, a daydreamer. An anonymous man driven by simple instincts: hunger, greed, lust. An unhappy, hounded creature that issues a challenge to Goethe’s Faust. This is Sokurov’s fourth film about the corrupting effects of power, following his meditations on Hitler, Lenin and Emperor Hirohito.