Alexander Sokurov, director of "Faust", receives the Golden Lion award during the closing ceremony of the 68th Venice Film Festival September 10, 2011.
Sokurov’s Faust is not a film adaptation of Goethe’s tragedy in the usual sense, but a reading of what remains between the lines. What is the colour of a world that gives rise to colossal ideas ? What does it smell like ? It is stuffy in Faust’s world: earthshaking plans are born in the cramped space where he scurries about. He is a thinker, a mouthpiece for ideas, a transmitter of words, a schemer, a daydreamer. An anonymous man driven by simple instincts: hunger, greed, lust. An unhappy, hounded creature that issues a challenge to Goethe’s Faust. Why stay in the moment if one can go further ? Further and further, pressing forward – not noticing that time stands still. And you shall pass, too.
