Touches You

Fantastic!

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

There has been numerous stage and film adaptations of Goethe's tragedy Faust, where the eponymous hero sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for the Devil serving Faust during his time on the Earth, as long as upon death, Faust will serve him in return in Hell. F.W. Murnau's 1926's Faust is probably the most acclaimed film adaptation, whilst Istvan Szabo's 1981 masterpiece Mephisto transformed the setting of the play to WWII-era Germany. I would imagine that there has never been such an imaginative and unpredictable interpretation than animator Jan Svankmajer's 1994 effort. Combining live-action, stop motion animation, and puppetry, the Czech's various talents come together to make a surreal, and brilliant, piece of art.The film begins as Faust (Petr Capek) finds a map on a train that leads him to an abandoned theatre. When there, he accidentally creates a clay baby that develops quickly from a foetus into a fully formed baby. It quickly starts shifting its face into adults, as the Devil starts to attempt communication with Faust. He destroys the baby, and ends up unwillingly on a stage, in costume, accompanied by large wooden puppets who act as the supporting characters. The play and reality start to blend together, as even when our hero pops outside for a cigarette, the puppets follow dressed in human's clothes. The play/story goes on, as Faust plays with his new powers, and is frequently influenced by the Devil.It's quite hard to write a formal review about a film that had its impact on me a couple of hours after the credits have rolled, and some scenes where I genuinely did not know what was happening. It plays out like a sort of medieval Punch and Judy show, with some strangely creepy characters. It's undoubtedly quite childish and playful, but at the same time it is dark and complex, and more than anything else, frequently surreal.In my favourite scene, the Fool character who is reading Faust's textbook discovers that he can the Devil whenever he likes and dismiss him just as quickly. When dismissed, the Devil quickly legs it out the door, dressing himself up in an overcoat and hat and passing the smoking Faust in the street. As he is called back, he is forced to shed the clothes and rush back to the stage to make a explosive entrance. He goes back and forth for about 5 minutes. I couldn't help but laugh at the sheer absurdness of it all.While quite not as stunning as Alice (his Alice In Wonderland adaptation), Faust does constantly surprise, entertain, and bewilder.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Faust was the first Jan Svankmajer's movie I've seen and I've been literally stunned by his wicked and exotic interpretation of this classic plot. This is not a literal adaptation of the book written by Goethe, but a surreal combination of the different version of the original story (Like, for example, the play of Cristopher Marlowe) with stop-motion animation, live action performances and puppets. The result it's very interesting and well made, creating a unique and fascinating world. It's easy to see in what way filmmakers like Terry Gilliam, the brothers Quay were influenced by the astounding work of Jan Svankmajer: There is a great, dark atmosphere, filled with bizarre creatures and strange situations, like in the movies of those directors. If you love dark, surreal films, then you will like a lot this.

For mainly a Czech film, this is a good surreal film with interesting puppet and stop motion sequences. I can really only work out most of the beginning, where Petr Cepek as Faust is given a map in the street from some guy. He ignores this at first, but eventually he is convinced to go to where the map points out something in red. In this place which seems to be a theatre of some sort, there are many of surrealist events that (for me) make hardly any sense. It seems to be Faust has been given some powers and rule over the many puppet and clay characters, or something like that. It ends with him running out (like the previous visitor), and getting run over. All voices by Andrew Sachs. Worth watching!

This is why I watch films. Every now and then I stumble across beautiful strange, unique films! Grotesque, macabre but with a very weird sense of humour present at all times, this stop-motion animation / puppet & real actors film has to be one of the strangest films. I am so happy to own it! Actually in the beginning I was not quite linking to the character Faust, as he was too alienated in whatever happened - but while it went on, it began to make sense in a deeper level than the simple surrealism I had thought in the first place.For all people interested in strange, weird films, black humour & fed up with the trash Hollywood serves us, then go for this spectacular film!