Personally, I like this film. It's an imaginitive adaptation, and it definitely begs to be seen. I think, though, that Jan Svankmajer fans are likely to be disappointed. People unfamiliar with his work are likely to hate it. Now, I'm no expert in his work. I've seen three shorts and his version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, just called Alice in the U.S. The three shorts are all masterpieces in their own ways (my favorite being The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia) and Alice is a near-masterpiece. Faust is not nearly as inventive as those other works. Svankmajer is known as a stop-motion animator, but his Faust contains little animation. The animation that there is is universally stunning. I will bet that any fan of the medium will just love the sequence with the baby, and will probably wish that it were longer. Actually, the medium that is most abundant in Faust is marionettes. Most of the film is live action, as well. The marionettes are often replaced with actors wearing gigantic papier-mache heads. This isn't as interesting as stop-motion animation, but it still works. Some of the puppets can be annoying, especially the jester. I believe that the puppet characters are done in the kind of exaggerated style familiar to puppet shows. 7/10.
