Fausto: Primordial Poetry

Everyone knows the story of Faust, a tale which tells of a prominent scholar who, tired of life, meets the devil at a crossroads late at night and makes a pact with him, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. It’s a classic German legend that quickly became well-known all over continental Europe.

Reworked as a tragic play by Goethe in the early 19th century, the story has since grown in popularity even more and has since spread all across the globe, with more adaptions consistently being undertaken. This leads us nicely to August 2018 – the release of the film Fausto.

Fausto is hugely audacious; it’s self-indulgent, daring and ambiguous. If I were more critical, I might even dare to call it a pretentious piece of modern cinema. But, I’m not, and I like taking a break from the myriad blockbusters that have saturated the industry. I like films that don’t cater to an audience that desperately need the plot to be spelled out in front of them. So, when I watched Fausto earlier this week, I felt incredibly satisfied afterwards.

Directed by Canadian filmmaker, Andrea Bussmann, Fausto is loosely set in modern-day Mexico on the hazy, sun-soaked Pacific coast of Oaxaca, however the setting could be argued to be much more fantastical and fictional.

Andrea Bussman

Dreamy and meditative at first glance, Bussmann’s story is actually extremely taut, refined and concise. With a running time of around 69 minutes, this film is much shorter than you might expect. One of the things that give the film’s running time a sense of rationality is the fact that it’s actually billed by many as a documentary. In reality, Fausto is a documentary in style alone. It is a story that inhabits the hazy ambiguity between fact and fiction and explores the state of unknowing found within that zone.

This is perhaps best evidenced in the film’s opening scene where the viewer is provided with darkness, the sound of waves crashing along the shore and a distant light of indistinct purpose. This the moment we are introduced to the film’s omniscient narrator:

“When the world was being remade, a beautiful young native girl was taken prisoner. She was held captive on a fierce raider’s ship. But no man can always keep watch, and through their carelessness she escaped. Surrounded by darkness she flung herself into the sea.She reached the shore and hid in the forest. The men searched but never found the girl. Over the years they would return to these waters and look for her. This place became known as La Escondida, the hidden one.”

Throughout this short monologue, the distant light scans across the horizon. It is never confirmed whether this is the searching light of the raider’s ship or the guiding light of the beautiful native girl. For me, this opening shot generally defines the tone of the movie. This is a story that encompasses a number of different orally told stories and, more often than not, there is a duality to these tales that leave the viewer with a feeling of uncertainty.

A Faustian Tale

On first glance, anyone would be forgiven for believing this was a strict, unerring adaption of the story of Faust. Of course, it’s the name of the film. However, reference to Faust is actually limited and allusions to the legend come in the form of quick references told via unnamed characters and indistinct locations.

Guy Lodge in Variety writes, "Bussmann’s film is hardly a standard adaptation, and while its sliver of binding narrative may involve an uncanny exchange of sorts, those Faustian allusions are merely woven in with other threads of fanciful indigenous storytelling, none granted more significance or credence than another."

However, this is a story centred around the power of oral storytelling, and through its original, authentic tales and distant folklore, Bussmann’s Fausto truly captures the essence of what makes the story of Faust so popular and well-known. If anything, this is an homage to the Faust story as a form just as much as it is to the content itself.

During an interview with the Goethe Institute in Toronto, Bussmann states: "This film is obviously based on the German legend of Faust, and my previous work, Tales of Two Who Dreamt was based on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, so there definitely is a literary influence. But less so story elements and more so form elements… When I think about cinema, I often think about form elements…"

Bussmann is clearly a director who sees cinematic adaption as a way to find something original in an exercise of imitation, as opposed to directly imitating something original.

At the heart of Fausto’s bond with Faust is an intelligent postcolonial backdrop which mirrors Faust’s meeting with the devil with the indigenous peoples of the Americas meeting with the Spanish conquistadors. This idea of signing a contract with the devil is something that is particularly poignant when seen through this cultural lens.

Bussmann goes on to say: "The movie is called Faust for a reason… For me, it’s obviously very heavily bounded in themes of Faust, but if you’re not that well versed in Faust it might not be that obvious as other adaptions of Faust that take very direct threads of the story."

However faithful it is to the original story, I personally don’t believe much of a prior knowledge of the legend is required. This is largely because the film actually does more than enough to stand on its own two feet. While this Faustian backdrop is always present, there’s much more to this film than its nature as an adaptation.

Primordial Poetry

As I mentioned earlier, Fausto is very much a celebration of oral storytelling and the power of folklore and Bussman’s film tends to blur the lines between fact and fiction. Her documentary style is immediately at odds with the fictitious nature of the stories told throughout the narrative. The style, plot and setting end up working together perfectly in tandem with Bussman, in my opinion, finding a winning formula that I can only describe as primordial poetry.

The great thing about the narrative is that these oral stories don’t take themselves too seriously yet are filmed in a way that suggests they should be. We are introduced to an array of ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary, magical or even supernatural scenarios, much like Faust himself.

So, we hear about a night guard encountering the devil and a young cleaner narrowly avoiding a fatal experience at the Enchanted House where you can buy whatever you want but are bound to die shortly afterwards. We hear of a young Frenchman who has lost his shadow and a strange forested grove where witches once dwelled.

Bussmann's idyllic setting, La Escondida.

Characters are drafted in without much notice and then disappear just as quickly afterwards. Victor, for example, "has a constellation tattooed on his chest. He often tells the same story of a woman. Her name was Susanna. One night she walked straight out of the sea straight towards him. She was very beautiful and they made love for many nights. Then one afternoon she left without a trace."

This short piece of narration is coupled with a shot of two distant figures out on the beach during the heat of the day. Here, a lot is conveyed in just a few sentences and there’s a real poignancy in the mystery of the story. There are definite qualities innate within this terse, open-ended style of storytelling.

However, one of my favourite moments in the film comes when a character is stroking a cat. The narration is as follows: "Silent zoos exist everywhere, in large institutions and private homes. They exist in secret because all animals are telepathic to a degree. They even retain their telepathic abilities when they are stuffed. By stroking them in a clockwise fashion, one can receive messages from the future. Blind animals are the most telepathic of all. Even less people know this. If the truth got out, there would be all out carnage."

To me, this is an incredible passage of narration, and this is where we find that sense of audacity that I mentioned earlier on. To write like this is to maintain a level of faith in the effectiveness of the originality of your work and I think it definitely pays off. But then again, if the truth ever got out, there would be all out carnage.

The telepathic stuffed animals of Fausto.

In the film’s constant digressions and narrative rabbit holes, we not only find everything that is fantastic about this strange little film, but also everything that is fantastic about contemporary filmmaking and passionate storytelling in general. It is precisely these obscure little digressions that make this film such an unexpected treasure.

Finally, one of my favourite aspects of Fausto has to be the narration which continues consistently throughout the story. Omniscient, elemental, primordial and ancient, this great script is executed perfectly at all times. So much so, I’ll end with one of the last lines.

"I am the woods, the air, the water. When the storm roars in the forest, in my caves you’ll find safety. Through me, your own self is shown to you. But you will not see me."