Faust

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. Heinrich Faust (Johannes Zeiler) is eaten up by his longing for enlightening. He seeks to understand the very nature of life and how it makes the world go round. Driven by his burning desire for cognition he even unearths corpses and rummages in their guts just to localise the home of the soul. While he keeps on telling himself "in the beginning was the word" he gets to know the racketeer Mauricius (Anton Adassinsky, playing a wordly version of Mephistopheles) who eventually contradicts him: "In the beginning was the deed". In spite of being amorphic Mauricius considers himself an übermensch. Faust's obscure new friend takes him to the twilight zones of their small town. In a...