Faust

Watch Faust (2011) online on iFILM — Alexander Sokurov's Golden Lion winner at Venice and the final chapter of his power tetralogy, following Moloch, Taurus and The Sun. Shot largely in Germany and Iceland, with Johannes Zeiler in the title role and Anton Adasinsky as the moneylender Mauricius — a figure who smells wrong and moves wrong and is clearly not a man.

The doctor has dissected enough bodies to know the soul isn't in there. His money is gone. His learning is worthless. Mauricius arrives with offers that require no contract — just proximity and patience. Faust meets a young woman named Margarete, kills her brother in a brawl that Mauricius arranged, and then agrees to a bargain not because he was tempted but because he simply cannot help himself.

Sokurov treats Goethe's myth as a study in self-surrender rather than a deal with evil. The devil here is more pathetic than threatening; the real horror is how little resistance Faust puts up. Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel shot the film in a deliberately distorted palette — claustrophobic, ochre-heavy, like Flemish painting gone slightly wrong. This is 140 minutes of dense, uncommented European art cinema. Stream Faust online on iFILM.