Review of Jan Svankmajer’s FAUST (1994) – Playing on the Webster Film Series Virtual Cinema Beginning September 18th

Jan Svankmajer’s Faust (1994) starts playing on the Webster Film Series Virtual Cinema  on 09/18. Please visit webster.edu/film-series for more information.  A link to the screening room can be found HERE

Review by Stephen Tronicek

I’ve heard my father’s home country of the Czech Republic (Czechia) called, “The Wild West of Europe.” That people went there when they, “wanted to do drugs and shoot illegal fireworks.” It’s quite fitting then, that whatever Czech cinema I have experienced tends to break rules and throw all genre constraints out the window. From the groundbreaking satire of Miloš Forman, to the surreal experiments of Věra Chytilová, Czech cinema has never feared being different. 

    This brings us to Jan Švankmajer, the stop-motion animation guru behind some of Czech cinemas best films. Švankmajer’s approach to allegorical storytelling comes with the same tongue in cheek demeanor of Forman and Chytilová, but his influences are steeped in mythical storytelling and a child’s point of view.

    This finds itself intensely realized in his newly restored adaptation of the German myth Faust. The story, about a man who bargains with the Devil, is ripe for Švankmajer’s particular lens. In 1994, when the film was released, the Soviet Union was somewhat of a recent memory and the anxieties of Czech interaction with them still loomed large. Švankmajer attacks these anxieties through his specific lens of puppetry and child abuse. 

    So, let’s start with the puppetry. While the majority of the film is live action and follows Dr. Faust (Peter Cepek) as he tries to battle the Devil’s influence in his life, much of the film is made up of stop-motion animation and marionettes. At times, Faust even manages to transform into a marionette himself. By highlighting the material bounds of our bodies, Švankmajer is able to show how people are often looked at in material terms. It shows how larger systems and ideas are guiding them, rather than their own individual action. This feels bluntly represented by the material clay and marionettes showing up in the story when the Devil does. The Devil is a hollow material, a hollow puppet, a hollow head of clay, and Faust will not find happiness in these materials. 

But the puppets and marionettes aren’t just there to represent materials, they are there to represent the manipulation and abuse from a child’s point of view. This brings us to the element of child abuse in Švankmajer’s films. Often his inspirations are myths and children’s stories, adapted with a darker edge. He uses the trappings of children’s entertainment (stop-motion animation, fairy tales) to strip the audience of their inhibitions and then reminds us of what it’s like to lie in a dark room staring at the closet, hoping some creature from a story we’ve heard won’t come out and eat us. This is made most explicitly clear in his masterpiece Little Otik (Otesanek) where the point of view is framed from the eyes of a child. As this child tells the adults of both a pedophile in the building and a monster that is eating people, the adults both physically abuse her and verbally scold her for mentioning any problems. In allegorical terms, this childlike point of view could be read as an innocent and pure idea of a society. In Švankmajer’s movies, society gets verbally abused and manipulated, and that doesn’t change in Faust. The “childish” formats of stop-motion animation and marionettes lure you in, but are extremely malicious forces. This draws a thematic parallel to the work of Guillermo Del Toro, as his use of fairy tales and the childlike point of view effectively does the same thing. All that being said, Švankmajer often attacks these issues with his tongue firmly planted within his cheek. Go watch the first five seconds of his animated short “Jabberwocky” and you’ll know exactly what I mean. 

All of that is deeply layered and interesting, but unfortunately, the film isn’t always. Faust is best when it’s conveying a lot of visual jokes and information non-verbally. The best example of this happens early in the film, when Faust passes a woman holding a baby on a stairwell. While the baby is fine, the woman drags a baby doll behind her, allowing the doll’s head to smash against each new stair. Having grown up around elements of Czech culture, there’s something deeply personal and horribly funny about this image. Unfortunately, the film isn’t always showing instead of telling. There are long sequences of allegorical dialogue between Dr. Faust and the various marionettes and clay creatures that stop the film’s pacing in its tracks. The imagery that Švankmajer presents is strong enough to convey the story and gets weighed down by dialogue. 

While it may not be his best work, Švankmajer’s Faust does manage to be a perfect microcosm of his interests and obsessions. Your mileage may vary on them. If anything, Faust is unlike anything you’re going to see this year and earns its place in the genre-bending cannon of Czech cinema. Especially in a time such as this, we need some art of the “Wild West,” to break some molds and show us just how absurd and ugly the world actually is.