Dusapin - Faustus, The Last Night
by Peter Mussbach
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Caroline Stein, Georg Nigl, Jaco Huijpen, Robert Worle, Urban MalmbergDirector: Peter Mussbach
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Published)
Format: Dolby, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 91 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-04-24
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Naive
Movie Reviews of Dusapin - Faustus, The Last Night
Movie Review: When Godot becomes Togod
Summary: 5 Stars
Officially inspired by Marlowe's Dr Faustus, Dusapin retains the very last night Faustus experiences when he shifts from life to death, from the world to damnation. But Dusapin goes a lot farther than just this last night, this shift from living to damned. Dusapin pretends he did not follow Goethe for whom Faust is saved from damnation in the end. And there I will start to disagree. Dusapin saves his Faustus in a far more subtle way than Goethe, but he does not follow Marlowe for whom Dr Faustus is dismembered on the stage. The whole opera is going to be performed on the slanting face of a giant clock, the minute hand on eight and the hour hand on three. The angel is lying on twelve. Numbers are essential in this opera and Dusapin sets the trend by defining his opera as lasting one night and eleven "numbers". The angel sets, from its divine twelve, one objective to Faustus, to be reborn, from the very start to the very end. Eight is the number of Christ in his glory after his rising from the dead, just as three is six hours before the death of Christ at the ninth hour, that is to say the time when Christ is arrested. The opera is centered on time and no one can escape this visual metaphor. The clock will turn, minute hand and/or hour hand, in the normal way or backwards. And at times the clock face will turn while the hands remain still. Even the clock face turns while the rectangle of light that were set on the hour notches do not turn, thus producing two clock faces one turning and the other still. Or even further, the clock face will turn at the end while the various notches had been taken off and light comes from inside the clock through these open slots, this time the light turning with the clock, reunified with the clock. At one moment the minute hand will go up with Sly sitting on it, elevating him at the same time. And time is ever present in the opera. In fact Faustus discovers little by little that beyond this night, beyond death there is eternity and he reconstructs eternity, that is to say what was before the world was ever created when there was only spatial immensity in total darkness and the first thing God did when he appeared with his spirit was to create time, the very beginning of time, the alpha of time. And when the world comes to a close, that time will be brought to its omega and then eternity will be again, this time eternity in light, "the mystery of light, absolute light, light without end", but both before the alpha of time and after the omega of time there was and will be pure timeless eternity in an immense expanse of empty space and some kind of absolute silence. Music cannot exist in this timeless eternity since music needs a tempo and without time there cannot be any tempo. The opera is founded on a pentad of five characters. Faustus of course, the absolute self-centered egotist. Mephistopheles of course, the deceitful demon that never lies though he never tells the truth. The angel who calls Faustus to rebirth constantly. Sly, the slob who represents life in its excess of enjoyment, in other words the purely human character with no consciousness of anything, just a sly slob. And finally Togod who represents another type of eternity, that of repetition, "repeat after me", and his final conclusion, "there is nothing". And that nothing is a white balloon on a string that came out of the hour slot into which Faustus had disappeared, a white balloon that Sly with the pin he will take from Mephistopheles' lapel will explode into one single bang that brings total darkness. The end. In fact we should speak of the clock as a sixth character but then a seventh is a kitchen robot that will start beating the air with its revolving beater at the end of the opera. And yet the number of the world is given by Mephistopheles when he defines the universe as being "nine: the seven planets, the firmament and the Empyreal heaven". And nine is Christ's death, though a death with the promise of a resurrection. What is amazing is that Dusapin has entirely Christianized the tale in a world where Christian symbols are no longer very vivid. In fact he has transformed Dr Faustus's tale into a new version of Waiting for Godot and Togod is nothing but the anagram of Godot. The two men, Vladimir and Estragon, are there redoubled by their two antagons, Pozzo and Lucky. The only difference seems to be that Dusapin has materialized Godot into Togod. Then we understand why time is central. It is no longer the Christian concept of time but the existential concept of time, that time we have to waste waiting for something that never comes, and never come it does since in the end we fly away into immensity, eternity, endless light. We are back before the beginning of time with only one little change, absolute darkness has been replaced by absolute light. Dusapin has thus invested Waiting for Godot in Dr Faustus and produced an extremely self-centered egotistic character who turns into a vaporous balloon that some kind of homeless pocket-picking thief explodes with a pin from Satan. Faustus is full of nothing, of thin air, of beans some would say, the beans with which you may make the poisonous broth you concoct in the eleventh hour to get rid of the evil minded devil that is haunting your life. In other words Faustus is nothing but hot air.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines