Svankmajer's second feature after his excellent re-imagining of "Alice in Wonderland" takes on the altogether darker subject matter of "Doctor Faustus" as told by playwrights and novelists Marlowe, Goethe and Christian Grabbe - the alchemist who sells his soul to the devil for knowledge and power and unable to repent is finally damned.
In Svankmajer's world we are introduced to a ordinary Czech man (Petr Cepek) who on a whim follows an unmarked map through the streets of Prague to a run down theatre, where in a strange twist on audience participation unwittingly becomes the lead actor in a puppet retelling of the classic story.
Given the freedom and scope a part-animated version of this story affords it is disappointing how few imaginative leaps there are - the majority of the animation is of the relatively unexciting traditional wooden puppets, creepy in their way, but simplistic - the birth of a homunculus baby early on is one exception; its face morphing into that of the protagonist, and finally a skeleton. This echoes the most successful animated aspect of this retelling, using Cepek's own face, cold eyed and immobile, as Mephistopheles, although it takes an hour, two thirds of the running time, to get to the crucial point of Faustus signing the deed which then leaves most of the incident of the story out aside from a quick trip to the King of Portugal and a visit from Helen of Troy. The antics of the Marlovian sub-plot, that of the jester stealing his master's powerful books for his own buffoonery, is as tiresome here as in that play. The final twist out of the world of the puppet theatre and back into reality is an effective one where loose threads come together in a violent conclusion, but some notable images aside this ultimately feels like a missed opportunity for Svankmajer to really let fly with some great source material.
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traistboar
kanopy.onuryz
AKA Lekce Faustdombrewer
Svankmajer's second feature after his excellent re-imagining of "Alice in Wonderland" takes on the altogether darker subject matter of "Doctor Faustus" as told by playwrights and novelists Marlowe, Goethe and Christian Grabbe - the alchemist who sells his soul to the devil for knowledge and power and unable to repent is finally damned.In Svankmajer's world we are introduced to a ordinary Czech man (Petr Cepek) who on a whim follows an unmarked map through the streets of Prague to a run down theatre, where in a strange twist on audience participation unwittingly becomes the lead actor in a puppet retelling of the classic story.
Given the freedom and scope a part-animated version of this story affords it is disappointing how few imaginative leaps there are - the majority of the animation is of the relatively unexciting traditional wooden puppets, creepy in their way, but simplistic - the birth of a homunculus baby early on is one exception; its face morphing into that of the protagonist, and finally a skeleton. This echoes the most successful animated aspect of this retelling, using Cepek's own face, cold eyed and immobile, as Mephistopheles, although it takes an hour, two thirds of the running time, to get to the crucial point of Faustus signing the deed which then leaves most of the incident of the story out aside from a quick trip to the King of Portugal and a visit from Helen of Troy. The antics of the Marlovian sub-plot, that of the jester stealing his master's powerful books for his own buffoonery, is as tiresome here as in that play. The final twist out of the world of the puppet theatre and back into reality is an effective one where loose threads come together in a violent conclusion, but some notable images aside this ultimately feels like a missed opportunity for Svankmajer to really let fly with some great source material.