Sokurov's interpretation of Faust is one extraordinary, hallucinatory trip.

| Feb 28, 2021

In a remarkable and ultra-physical performance, Zeiler gives us a staggering, stumbling, careless and forgetful Faust, constantly muttering and undecided, fickle in his attentions.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 30, 2019

For those looking to leave reality behind for some exquisitely-crafted existentialist musings, Faust is a must-see, operatic arthouse event.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 8, 2019

If you like your cinema absurd and grotesque, Sokurov's Faust won't disappoint.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2018

Surviving 139 minutes of this barrage of profuse but elusive imagery and sound is something of an ordeal.

| Jul 6, 2018

Sokurov's [Faust] has a distinctly human scale, yet he flattens the tale's meaning.

| Apr 12, 2018

Aleksandr Sokurov's tetralogy of power, previously dedicated to real biographical subjects (Lenin, Hitler, Hirohito), unexpectedly concludes with a legendary fictitious man: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust.

| Nov 16, 2017

The ying-yang approach, remarkably different from any other interpretation of the source I've seen, is equally invigorating and frustrating, but in the best way.

| Oct 4, 2017

There are moments in the movie when the viewer will undoubtedly be willing to sell their soul to watch something else.

| Original Score: C | Sep 27, 2014

Aleksandr Sokurov's German-language adaptation of Faust is dense with hard-to-forget imagery, but impenetrable for much of its runtime.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Aug 18, 2014

Maintains a certain mesmerizing power and a surreal beauty that sticks with you despite making you gag at times at its self-indulgence and impenetrability.

| Original Score: B | Jan 6, 2014

...even if not all of Sokurov's meaning is clear, it is fascinating to wander through this world steeped in morbid corporeality and radiant innocence. The effect is often like being inside the paintings of Bosch and Bruegel...

| Original Score: B | Dec 23, 2013

A grueling side show of a film, a morbid, mightily uninvolving piece ...

| Nov 21, 2013

Much of the dialogue is scatological humor that's leadenly unfunny, like a professor reading out loud from "Tristam Shandy."

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 18, 2013

Darren Aronoskfy, president of the Venice Film Festival in 2011, stated that Faust...is a film you cannot forget once you've seen it. In a way, he's right, though this writer still doubts whether the memory you are left with is a fond one.

| Original Score: B- | Nov 15, 2013

Compared to many Sokurov films, this one has an enlivening paradoxicality: it's morbid but upbeat, grim yet rapturous.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 15, 2013

The movie expands in its frame, surpassing simple comprehension and continuing to grow in your mind - and perhaps to blow it - long after it's over.

| Nov 14, 2013

Faust's worldview may be esoteric, but its vision is lucid.

| Nov 14, 2013

I can't be content to burble about the surface effects of Faust, or use the Silly Putty method of critical exegesis to twist it into a justifiable shape. Instead I have to say: Faust is shameful.

| Nov 14, 2013

Sokurov's Faust is a work of crushing tedium, relieved only by the spare moments of beauty that pop out like dandelions in a washed-out landscape of oppression and grotesquerie.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 14, 2013