FAUST
A film review by Michael Brooke
Copyright 1995 Michael Brooke
Written and directed by Jan Svankmajer UK/France/Germany/Czech Republic, 1994, 97 mins Starring Petr Cepek, Jan Kraus, Vladimir Kudla
A welcome corrective to the stiflingly literal brand of literary transcription peddled by Merchant-Ivory et al--with FAUST, the Czech animator Jan Svankmajer takes basic ideas from the plays of Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, an obscure novel by the now-forgotten Christian Dietrich Grabbe, Charles Gounod's opera, and old Czech puppet versions of the oft-adapted legend of the man who sold his soul to the devil, and filters them through his own imagination, which, as anyone who's seen even one of his earlier films will know, is one of the most wildly inventive in Europe. He tried a similar approach to Lewis Carroll's work in ALICE (1988), which although intermittently brilliant looked more like a collection of short films (the medium for which Svankmajer is best known) than a coherent feature. FAUST is far more successful, blending live action with Svankmajer's trademark claymation and the giant puppets he previously used in the mini-feature DON SAJN (1970) to unnervingly dislocated effect.
The unexplained shifts in style perfectly suit Svankmajer's approach to the text, which only vaguely touches on the subtleties and depths of the Marlowe and Goethe versions--but this isn't an attempt to provide an alternative to Goethe, it's more of a late twentieth century response to the theme. And although uncredited, Franz Kafka and Mikhail Bulgakov (THE MASTER AND MARGARITA) and indeed Lewis Carroll lurk somewhere in the background (Faust's servant seems to change size relative to Faust in almost every scene the two are in, and the opening in which Faust enters a mysterious corridor off a side street is straight out of the opening of ALICE IN WONDERLAND).
Where Svankmajer's version differs radically from other presentations of the Faust story is that Faust himself (or rather the unnamed character representing him) is almost entirely passive. He is lured off the streets of Prague by two men handing out a mysterious map, and ends up in an old theatre performing in a nightmarish puppet version of FAUST (there are shades of Luis Bunuel's THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE in his realisation that an audience is watching and he doesn't know his lines). Wherever he goes, he is watched, either by the two men at the beginning (who subsequently turn up to perform miracles in a garden cafe), or by the theatre staff, or by Mephistopheles, whom Faust summons because it seems like the logical thing to do (and it's in the script). Although Svankmajer never claims that this is an explicit allegory of life in pre-Vaclav Havel Prague, it's highly unlikely that he was unaware of the comparisons. And this whole theme of Manipulation From Above (or indeed Below) reaches its climax in the final scene, a gloriously sick plot twist that both makes perfect sense in context and provides an impeccably neat circular finale to the film.
The dialogue is in blank verse, with all the voices in the English version provided by Andrew Sachs (best known as Manuel in "Fawlty Towers," though you'd never guess from the range of voices on display). It sounds as though much of the text originates from Marlowe (though it would be interesting to compare this with the German version), though as the film is far more driven by its virtuoso visuals this is largely irrelevant. And these are frequently stunning--a pool of nameless slime forms itself into a rapidly-aging baby, hordes of tiny angels and devils do battle for Faust's soul, apples wither into maggot-ridden husks at the devil's passing, while an old tramp carries a badly-wrapped package that might just contain a severed leg--and Svankmajer throws in plenty of knockabout comedy to emphasise the story's theatrical origins: a fiery chariot from Hell causes problems for the theatre's fire safety officer, a devil is repeatedly summoned and banished by Faust's Punch-like servant until he collapses with exhaustion (running to and from the theatre past surprised-looking--genuinely unprepared?--Prague passers-by), while a Gounod-scored opera/ballet interlude with ballerinas raking fields beautifully parodies the socialist realism that the old Czech government was so fond of.
Above all, FAUST demonstrates just how the seemingly catch-all adjective "surreal" has been so debased since its introduction 70-odd years ago by virtue of its being used to describe anything even vaguely unusual. As one would expect from a 25-year member of the Prague Surrealist Group, FAUST is a Surrealist film, and as such manages a more effective attempt at capturing dream-logic than almost any film since Bunuel passed away. It isn't for everyone--even some Svankmajer fans have expressed disappointment with it, presumably because it isn't animated throughout, or they have a problem with the puppets (this is because Czech culture recognises puppets as a serious art form, while in most Western countries they're strictly for children)--but anyone who approaches it with a genuinely open mind should lap it up. It's Svankmajer's longest, most inventive and quite possibly weirdest film to date.
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