Alexander Sokurov’s Faust isn’t an adaptation of Goethe’s text in the usual sense. The filmmaker says he shot what he read between the lines. What does the world of good ideas look like? According to the creator of the film, Faust is a mover of thoughts, a conspirator, a dreamer. But like every human being he is ruled by the most fundamental instincts: hunger, greed, and lust. Faust culminates Sokurov’s tetralogy on the nature of power. The first three films focused on actual historical figures: Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, and Emperor Hirohito – all avid gamblers who lost the most important bets of their lives. What does Faust, who belongs to literature and not politics, have to do with them? Like them he loved and propounded words that were easy to believe, and like them he was morbidly unhappy in his daily life. Evil is indestructible: it is always reborn, and Goethe spoke its essence when he said: "Unhappy people are dangerous.”