65
Metascore
16 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyThe A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyIt manages to convey a desire for power in abstract terms, divorced from material gain or a need to be admired. What’s more, it manages to do it with energy and a good deal of weird humor.
- 80Total FilmTotal FilmAlexander Sokurov’s riff on Goethe’s tragedy is a bewildering but blazingly styled fever-dream epic.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungThe Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungThis is far from a dull, academic work and the fast-paced talk is matched by swiftly changing scenes full of vibrant visuals. Life bubbles out of each frame in a grungy, foul-smelling rush.
- 80Village VoiceMichael AtkinsonVillage VoiceMichael AtkinsonFaust is not your great-granddaddy's selling-your-soul fable, but something new, a dreamy immersion into the messiness of myth, where hubris and desire can get lost in the chaos of time and retelling.
- 80Time OutJoshua RothkopfTime OutJoshua RothkopfOften, Faust plays like a lost cousin to Andrei Tarkovsky’s haunted Stalker (1979), catnip for the slow-and-low crowd. Settle in, because this requires your charity, but you’ll dream it all back up the next night.
- 75Portland OregonianMarc MohanPortland OregonianMarc MohanAs usual, the director is a wizard at camera movement and more than willing to plunge his audience into unpleasantness.
- 63Slant MagazineBill WeberSlant MagazineBill WeberThough its ballast of jokes and spectacle are formidable, it often lurches about at a remote, enigmatic distance
- 60The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawThis Faust is part bad dream, part music-less opera: sometimes muted and numb, though with hallucinatory flashes of fear.
- 60Time Out LondonDave CalhounTime Out LondonDave CalhounIt has a rigorous, even unrelenting, grey, green and brown palette and, narratively, it’s tough to penetrate.
- 40VarietyJay WeissbergVarietyJay Weissberg[A] film with a maddeningly opaque narrative and a brutalizing cascade of nonstop verbiage.