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Sokurovs Faust: rysk kritik mot västeuropeiska upplysningsideal

Author

  • Adrian Byström

Summary, in English

The intention of this paper is to explore the Russian film director Alexander Sokurov’s perspective on Western European Enlightenment in his movie Faust. The essay uses the film theory and method known as neoformalism in order to analyse the film’s aesthetic qualities in a cultural and historical context. The result of the analysis shows that the film’s dominant principle, to which many of the other aspects of the film can be linked, is constituted by a contrast between the metaphysical and the hyper realistic, which is made visible in the use of a variety of visual and narrative techniques. The conclusion made from this neoformalistic study is that the director uses the first part of the story of Goethe’s drama Faust in order to comment on the materialistic and secular values of Western Europe. This criticism presented in Faust is interpreted as originating from the specific historical context of Russian cultural history.

Department/s

Publishing year

2018

Language

Swedish

Document type

Student publication for Bachelor's degree

Topic

  • Cultural Sciences

Keywords

  • Sokurov
  • Faust
  • neoformalism
  • slavofiler
  • västvänliga
  • rysk film
  • Europastudier

Supervisor

  • Johanna Lindbladh (FD)