Juli N
We all know the story about the man whom sold his soul to the devil for knowledge. I wasn't here for the story so much as I was here for the true artisan of cinematic art, and no one does it better than Jan Svankmajer!
A brilliant display of his craftsmanship, including Stop Motion Animation, Puppetry, Claymation!
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
04/22/25
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Audience Member
A better integration. Saying a man is determined "by the stars, by our genes, by our repressed feelings, by society, its education, advertising – repression of all kinds", is saying that everything else is determined.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/05/23
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Audience Member
Love this movie. I always watch 'Tetsuo' back to back with this (as that's how I used to have it recorded on VHS off the TV).
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
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Audience Member
Very cool animations and gigantic wooden puppets. The plot itself is relatively slow and hard to follow due to its surreal and metaphoric qualities, but you get the overall concept. However you walk away with some pretty amazing visuals and surreal imagery.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/26/23
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Audience Member
Uma releitura surrealista de Fausto. Pessoas viram marionetes e marionetes viram pessoas.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/15/23
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Audience Member
A complete surprise to first-time Svankmajer moviewatchers, a good relief to Svankmajer followers since his short-film days in the 60s, and an undecipherable enigma of sensory overload to those familiar only with Goethe's play, this completely free adaptation challenges mainstream moviewatching standards and refuses to be conventional.
If there is something valuable about the style of the renowned Czech artist is his visual composition. The editing is merciless. The shots change every second. Close-ups emphasize the unimaginable details, including those of the human body. Everything becomes alive, even the "most inert" objects, if we could assign degrees to the state of inertia. Secondly, we have Svankmajer's consistent quality throughout the decades even if he keeps delivering exactly the same style with hundreds of different stories to tell. Aggressive, graphic, hyperactive... that's his animation style.
Thirdly, this is his first feature-length effort to combine clay animation and stop-motion techniques with live action, but definitely the thousandth time he has done so considering his short-film body of work. This is not unknown territory to him. One of the greatest freedoms cinema gives you is artistic vision, assuming an idealistic world free of financial pressures, censorship and interests of studios. He is one of the most important examples in the industry. He envisions stories in a way few would... Actually, I'll take that back. He envisions stories in a way only he would, because if every person tried once in a while to exploit his/her imagination, I am pretty sure that equally fascinating stories could come out of it. However, it was a bold move to set the story in contemporary Prague, making the whole scenario to seem more tangible and menacing, like if it could assault you any day after leaving home.
There is no need to talk about the story, but about a term I use a lot in bizarre cinema, and that is "passive viewing". Did that term already exist when I made it up? I don't know, and I haven't bothered to check, but "passive viewing" is watching a film from a purely subjective and artistic point of view without the need to consciously rationalize all received stimuli. The heart interprets what the mind cannot, and the mind is tranquil knowing that dissecting particular pieces of art are sometimes not its task, but that of the heart.
Although not my favorite feature-length movie by this great poet, it is probably his most literarily ambitious, impactfully poetic and unexpectedly humorous, even if it questionably ridiculed the tragic tone of the original story, making the ending seem like an uninterested joke. Still, this remains as my third favorite cinematic adaptation of Goethe's immortal piece of literature.
85/100
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
Full Review
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