Jan Svankmajer's telling of the German folk tale "Faust" is--like his rendition of "Alice in Wonderland" (simply titled "Alice")--a refreshingly surreal treat of a film. It's confusing, disconcerting, and grotesquely tongue-in-cheek (the Jester character is at once obnoxious, amusing, and creepy). The plot plays out like a Greek Tragedy, with the ill-fated Faust (Petr Cepek) wheeling and dealing with the Devil and his minions, manipulating Old Scratch until finally succumbing to a seduction that results in his demise. The intricacies of story are thrown at the viewer in a consistent flurry, to the point where it's best NOT to try to piece it all together. Throughout my viewing, favorable comparisons to Homer's "Odyssey," David Lynch's "Eraserhead," and the early short films of Roman Polanski were crossing my mind. While the English dubbing is atrocious and Svankmajer sometimes lets the film lull too far into a dream-like state (to the point where I had to take a brief nap halfway through), that shouldn't inhibit you from seeing "Faust."
