Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, Alexander Sokurov’s riff on Goethe’s tragedy is a bewildering but blazingly styled fever-dream epic, completing the Russian art titan’s quadrilogy on power.
The basic story holds firm, with the ambitious prof (Johannes Zeiler) signing his soul off to Satan, here played as a moneylending gargoyle (Anton Adasinsky).
A sense-scrambling work that conjures images of indelible potency: you won’t forget the dissection, the lyrical love scene, the pitiable homunculus, the chilling trek to hell or Adasinsky naked in a hurry.
