Faust
by Jan Svankmajer
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DVD details
Actor: Antonin Zacpal, Jan Kraus, Jir? Such?, Petr Cepek, Vladim?r KudlaDirector: Jan Svankmajer
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); English (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: Pan & Scan, 1.33:1
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-09-02
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Kino Video
DVD Reviews of Faust
DVD Review: Modern retelling of the Faust myth
Summary: 5 Stars
This quirky movie bears seeing more than once. For one thing, it's filled with characters that appear repeatedly, something that could be hard to recognize unless you have the earliest and latest scenes fresh in mind. For another, its blurring of life and theater, its fusion and confusion of animation, puppetry, and live action might take more than one sitting to absorb.
Svankmajer's sense of the surreal and absurd pervade, as does the sense of poverty and decay lingering from Czechoslovakia's communist misrule. Ballerinas rake hay, marionettes run off on their own, human material turns into stop-animation puppetry - reality takes on a rubbery quality, as you'd expect from Svankmajer's work.
I found the complex imagery making up for loose logic and unexplained doings, but I know that won't suit all viewers. If you're willing to assume that reason is somewhere nearby, even if out of sight most of the time, you might enjoy this remarkable achievement in film-making.
-- wiredweird
DVD Review: Amazon Recommends III: Jan Svankmajer's Faust
Summary: 4 Stars
Hello again from this particular aisle of the abstract retail market.
Along with the Jiri Barta collection, the recommendation of Jan Svankmajer's Faust comes as no surprise because, well, I own and review a lot of animation and happen to already have Lunacy, Alice, and the Ossuary and Other Tales disc of Svankmajer's own oeuvre.
Svankmajer is a visually and poetically crafty person with a real eye towards creating splintered, abstract realities. His stories in many cases are relatively beside the point, which is why he turns to people like Lewis Carroll, de Sade and Poe, and Goethe and Marlowe who already fit his sensibilities so that he can create environments that can best be described as organically petrified and solidly splintered. That said, I'm not so sure "Faust" is the greatest place to start out for beginning viewers: a fair bit of the imagery, especially of food consumed, clay babies, and even the style of puppetry refer to many of his earlier works and read, to me, as a sort of shorthand to his typical symbolic and narrative concerns. Beginning viewers are recommended to check out at least "Alice" and hopefully a handful of his short films before taking on "Faust", which takes its time building its world under Svankmajer's jurisdiction before getting to the root of the story about halfway in.
For fans of Svankmajer, however, it might as well be top priority. The movie is at once hilarious and disturbing, witty and mesmerizing, the level of craft of which you can expect from this Czech auteur. Like many of his other works (and arguably those of most serious animators), the primary concern here is over movement. This film in particular expands to a more populated world than Svankmajer is usually used to, and it has a lot of mixed media at play. It really all comes together in a particularly fantastic scene wherein Faust debates philosophy with the constantly metamorphosing head of Mephistopheles. A smoother and more believable reflection of this guy's style is probably not possible.
--PolarisDiB
DVD Review: Did get it the first time round.
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this title on a bit of a whim, and after viewing it for the first time I put it on my shelf thinking I would never watch it again. Faust sat on my shelf for about a year. After a year of new experiences and enlightnments I was again ready for faust after a long ensightful nite with my mushy friends. I was up at 6am and wanted to watch a flick and bam there was faust looking me in the face, how could i deny it. During this second viewing I got it and Faust has become my go to movie. This movie is so deep and can be interpereted in a multitude of ways depending on what type of mood you are in while viewing. I find that this movie gets better the more times you watch it, so keep this in mind when purchasing. Again for the record I watched it the first time and did not like it, one year later it is my favorite movie, aint life strangly beautiful. Long live Dr. FaustDVD Review: SLAP IN THE FACE
Summary: 3 Stars
I believe that a dubbed soundtrack in such a high level movie resembles something like a slap in the face of the viewer. What happenned to the original soundtrack with the beautiful czech language melody?
I hope next release won't underestimate our capabilities and sense of aesthetics...
The movie really deserves five stars. The three ones were given thanks to the awful and unwilling distributor's work.
DVD Review: "How Should I Know, It's Latin" ~ A Demonic Guide To Higher Truth
Summary: 4 Stars
A flyer passed out by some innocuous stranger on the street containing a roadmap to a location circled in red, an egg unexpectedly found hidden in the middle of a loaf of bread followed by sudden darkness and a fowl wind when cracked open. Are these events sure signs of the calling of the "Infernal One", or nothing more than random occurrences adding a little unexpected disruption in an otherwise dull, mundane afternoon?
So begins Faust's journey into darkness, his encounter with Mephistopheles and his deal with the Devil. I guess this is the painful lesson mankind is doomed to learn over and over again, is it better to blindly embrace the Church and all its inherent ambiquity, or seek to understand the mysteries of the universe by whatever means at our disposal? One thing is certain, "Knowledge gained is far from bliss."
`Faust; released in `95 is a immensely original and highly inventive re-telling of the demonic tale that has long captured the European consciousness. Svankmajer's incorporation of puppetry and clay model animation works well overall, especially the puppet sequences in the theatre during the evocation sequence, but eventually becomes a little redundant and tiring towards the end. Definitely for a select audience, especially appealing for the magickcally inclined.
Description of Faust
Jan Svankmajer's long awaited follow up to his acclaimed "Alice" is an equally astounding version of the myth of Dr. Faustus. Merging live action with stop motion and claymation, Svankmajer has created an unsettling universe presided over by diabolic life size marionettes and haunted by skulking human messengers from hell.Jan Svankmajer DVDs
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