The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: Faust (1994), directed by Jan Svankmajer

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: 'Faust 72' by Dynastie Crisis

       One of the more common tropes in literature is the ‘deal with the devil’, wherein a character gives up something precious to them to a malevolent being in exchange for their heart’s desire. American blues legend Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his talent at the guitar, and there have been numerous other tales of artists and musicians doing the same over the years. Hell you could even classify the Ancient Greek myth of Orpheus as a ‘deal with the devil’ story, although Hades and Satan weren’t actually equivalent. However the archetypal example of this well-worn trope is the German legend of Faust, who made a deal with a demon in order to gain all of the world’s knowledge, which didn’t turn out so well for him. So famous is this story that the term ‘faustian’ has entered the popular vernacular, or at least the nerd vernacular.

       The tale of Faust has been adapted many times over the years; A famous play by Goethe, and of course several films. There was one by the great F.W. Murnau in 1926, and another by Peter Gorski in 1960, but the one we’re going to be looking at is 1994’s Faust, by Czech director Jan Svankmajer. Svankmajer, if you’ll recall, is the mind behind that stop-motion adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, which is by far the creepiest version of the story I’ve ever seen. I was interested in seeing how he would tackle things that are meant to be scary, like demons, so here we are.

       Released in 1994, Faust was written and directed by Jan Svankmajer and produced by Jaromir Kallista through Athanor, BBC, CNC and Pandora Filmproduction, based on the play by Goethe. Petr Cepek stars as our protagonist, a man thoroughly unenthused about his life and the world at large. On a whim he decides to visit the location on a flier handed out by two men, which turns out to be a theater putting on a production of ‘Faust’, and it turns out our protagonist is playing the lead role. Not being a theater person our protagonist tries to leave, but it seems that the show must go on, whether he wants it to or not. And furthermore, what is the difference between the play and reality anyway?

       As a story, Goethe’s Faust is pretty straight-forward. Faust, feeling the limitations of human knowledge and ability, rejects god and sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power, only to realize that this attachment to the world is what keeps him from true knowledge, i.e. knowledge of god. Svankmajer’s Faust follows a similar path. Our protagonist is unsatisfied with his life, and so assumes the role of Faust in order to gain a sense of power and purpose, not realizing that once committed that you can’t just go back on it. Our protagonist works with puppets and eventually becomes a puppet himself, struggling against the inevitability of his fate. A counterpoint to Goethe, who emphasized unquestioning devotion to god, a willing ‘puppet’ if you will, or a compliment, as our protagonist cavorts with the devil and pays the price? The film is presented in an intensely surreal manner, with the nature of time and space heavily distorted, so I suppose it could be both and neither at once.

       Of course the main reason I picked this version was for the visuals, and Svankmajer doesn’t disappoint. The man has an eye for decay, every other scene this film finds itself in new forms of squalor, from deteriorating apartments to stuffy backstage areas and rotting church basements. The stop motion animation is incredibly dynamic, a little herky-jerky but just seeing the myriad ways that Svankmajer twists and morphs Mephistopheles is a fascinating bit of filmmaking. Then of course there are the puppets, or perhaps marionettes is the better word, life-size marionettes that look like they were pulled out of Toulon’s basement. The marionettes are really what made this movie, not only because they perform the play the film is centered around and perform most of the dialogue but they are also creepy as hell. Seeing them interact with real people, the unnatural way they engage with the real world, helps to develop the absurdism of the whole thing. If you’ve got even a slight phobia of dolls however you might want to steer clear.

       Potential issues with Faust are much the same as with any surreal or absurdist film, those who prefer their stories straight-forward will likely find this incomprehensible and thus insufferable. There’s also some depictions of gore and sexuality that some viewers might find uncomfortable, in spite of them being performed by marionettes. Not a lot, but certainly enough to enhance the sense of the bizarre.

       Faust gets the recommendation. Much like his adaptation of Lewis Carroll, Svankmajer manages to twist and turn it in such a way that it feels almost wholly unique and thoroughly unsettling. I was also, much like with his previous film, captivated the whole way through. He certainly doesn’t make family films, but if you’re looking for something particularly out there this Halloween then Faust is the film for you.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Alice (1988), directed by Jan Švankmajer

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "White Rabbit", by Jefferson Airplane

       When it comes to children’s literature, there aren’t many that come close to Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. Sure you’ve got your Peter Pan’s and your Wizards of Oz and Little Nemos that have carved out their own little slice of the pie, but it’s hard to compare to the massive level of Alice-based media that continually poured from the minds of pop culture since then. We’re talking video games, comic books, spin-off novels, fashion, hit singles by Jefferson Airplane, enough to amuse any Wonderfan for a not-insignificant amount of time. Of course this also includes films, and since the closest we’ve ever gotten to Wonderland as far as I recall is Terry Gilliam’s Jabberwocky (which has nothing to do with the classic nonsense poem aside from the fact that the protagonist fights a creature called the Jabberwocky), I figured it was finally time to jump onto the bandwagon. And wouldn’t you know it, it fits the theme too!

       The first feature length film by Czech director Jan Švankmajer (he had built his career on short films before this), Alice, or Něco z Alenky as it’s known in the original tongue, tells the story that most of you are probably familiar with. Alice, a young girl wrapped up in the duties a young girl is required of her, playing with dolls and schoolwork, one day comes a talking white rabbit with a fancy wardrobe and an obsession with punctuality. An intensely curious child, Alice decides to chase after the rabbit, and ends up in Wonderland, a bizarre world populated by even more bizarre residents. Determined to find that white rabbit, Alice goes on an absurd journey through this nonsense country, interacting with all manor of unbelievable creature. Will she ever find the White Rabbit? Will she ever find her way home again? Only time will tell, and there seems to be a shortage of that in Wonderland.

       However, things were a little different when Jan decided to get behind the camera. You see he wasn’t a fan of the Alice adaptations that had been released up to then, believing they had made Wonderland come off as too much of a fairy tale. To him Lewis Carroll’s book was more like an amoral dream, and so that’s the kind of movie he decided to make. An intensely surreal film, where an almost entirely mute Alice (almost all dialogue is given to us by a narrator of sorts, Camilla Power in this case) travels about a nonsense world that’s made up of locations in or around her home, interacting with things that are made up of the things in her home. The White Rabbit’s home is a hutch surrounded by building blocks for example. It seems rather low-key compared to elaborate fantasy worlds of Disney and the like, but I actually really appreciate the idea. For children like Alice their home is their entire world, so it makes sense that their unconscious minds would reflect that. 

       That being said, apparently when Jan decided he wasn’t going to be doing a fairy tale interpretation of ‘Adventures in Wonderland’, that meant he had to go a complete 180 degrees and make it a total nightmare instead. Alice no longer lives in a normal house anymore, but instead some kind of Silent Hill-style post-industrial slum with nothing but dead bugs and jars of various things to keep her company. The White Rabbit is some kind of taxidermy monstrosity with bulging glass eyes and an open chest cavity where sawdust continually pours out, and he’s probably one of the lesser horrific ones. The film also uses extensive stop-motion animation, so when that living sock crawls up out of the floor and absorbs the glass eyes and dentures into itself to form a face, it’s looks as real as they can make it. Despite being a children’s book written specifically for a child, I cannot fathom this being a movie that you’d actually want your child to watch. Maybe kids in the Czech Republic have a better tolerance for this sort of stuff, but I think kid me would have gained two or three mental scars from this movie easy. If you ever wondered what Puppet Master would be like if it was actually scary, here it is.

       Nightmare fuel aside, I’d say my biggest issue with Alice is one of pacing. Now I know that this is meant to be a ‘dream’, which means lots of lingering shots on weird stuff, but with this movie it feels like every scene lingers on a minute or two longer than it probably should. The scene where Alice takes the shrinking drink and the growing tarts for example, feels like it takes up half the film, and the movie had barely started by that point. Which wouldn’t be a problem, necessarily, but when your movie is centered around a child entering and leavings rooms, constantly returning to the same bureau gag, and generally not doing much of anything in particular, you start to become overwhelmingly aware of the passage of time.

        The fact that this is a loose adaptation also becomes quite clear when you notice how sparse Wonderland has become. Alice manages to capture a couple of the set pieces from the novel, the room with the tiny door, the Caterpillar, the Mad Tea Party, even the baby that turns into a pig, but a lot of the things that would otherwise might seem standard going for a Wonderland movie are missing. There’s no Cheshire Cat for instance, a character that’s become as popular as Alice herself in the years since the novel’s release, nor will you find the Dodo, the Mock Turtle, the Duchess (weird to have the baby but not the baby’s mother) and many others. I’m sure it comes down to issues of time and budget, animating a dozen more characters would probably add up, but it does serve to make Wonderland seem a tad less wondrous, and the rampant mildew infestation on every wall in the film had already taken care of that within the first couple of minutes. 

       To me, the appeal of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is that it is a story about a very proper, very bright girl who is placed into a world that’s like a funhouse mirror version of her own, where everything she knows is wrong and everything wrong is right. Jan Švankmajer’s Alice certainly captures the illogic of Carroll’s world visually but that satirical aspect, the Victorian-era Stranger in a Strange Land is missing, and so too the main point of interest of the story in my opinion. Who is Alice in this film? What are her interests, what is her motivation, beyond the obsession with the White Rabbit? You can’t really tell, and if that’s the case then why do I care about her or what she’s doing? Does this movie work without the audience already knowing the Wonderland stories and being able to fill in the blanks? I dunno.

       While I wouldn’t claim it’s the definitive adaptation, if such a thing even exists, from a visual standpoint Alice earns a recommendation. It’s not a movie I’d pick up for family movie night, but considering the popularity of ‘dark’ versions of otherwise benign children’s stories I think finding a willing audience wouldn’t be all that difficult. Whether it’s for Halloween or a loved one’s Un-birthday, Alice just might be the film for you. Try it out, or you might end up losing your head.