Faust and Siberia movie

Faust, traduction Gérard de Nerval (Édition de 1877):

Extrait de la préface de Faust, traduction Gérard de Nerval
de la première édition (1828)

"Gœthe a voulu montrer dans ce personnage, réel et fantastique tout à la fois, la plus amère plaisanterie que le dédain puisse inspirer, et néanmoins une audace de gaieté qui amuse.

Il y a dans les discours de Méphistophélès une ironie infernale qui porte sur la Création tout entière et juge l’univers comme un mauvais livre dont le diable se fait le censeur."

************************

Savva Grudcyn , le Faust Russe:

L'histoire de "Siberia" de M. Ross se déroule en Russie et il existe un Faust Russe nommé "Savva Grudcyn" dans un roman du XVIIIe siècle :

"Le jeune Savva, fils de Forma Grudcyn, riche marchand de Kazan, s'en va mener sa première expédition commerciale dans une ville du nord de la Russie. Il noue une liaison avec la jeune épouse de son hôte. Mais parce qu'il s'est refusé à elle, pendant les fêtes de Pâques, elle lui fait boire un philtre qui le rend fou d'amour, puis le chasse. Désespéré, Saava invoque le diable pour reconquérir sa maîtresse . Survient alors un démon qui se présente comme son frère cadet , qui promet de le seconder en tout ; mais en échange Savva doit renier Dieu et se donne au diable en signant un pacte.

Une fois le pacte signé, il renoue avec sa maîtresse ainsi qu' à une vie de débauche. Durant cette période, le démon l'entraine une fois en pleine campagne où il lui fait visiter une cité extraordinaire et fait confirmer le pacte à Savva.

Par la suite, son père Forma Grudcyn veut venir chercher son fils, alors le démon entraine Savva dans un long voyage , durant lequel ils traversent plusieurs villes de la Russie. Durant son équipée, Savva néglige les conseils d'un "ancien" qui lui dévoile la vraie nature de son "frère". Puis le démon pousse Savva à s'enrôler dans l'armée du tsar. (.....) Après les combats dans l'armée du tsar, Savva tombe malade et est torturé par une légion de démons.

C'est alors qu'il est visité par la Vierge, par l'apôtre Jean et aussi par le métropolite russe Pierre. La Sainte Vierge sauve Savva et il se fait moine, puis il finit sa vie dans un monastère. "

"Savva sera reçu durant son pacte avec le diable à la cour infernale, qui calque le protocole moscovite du XVIIe siècle, qui prévoyait pour les hôtes de marque, un accueil en trois rencontres."

https://www.persee.fr/doc/jds_0021-8103_2004_num_2_1_1688

"Look, how a bird lies tangled in a net,
So fasten'd in her arms Adonis lies;
Pure shame and awed resistance made him fret,
Which bred more beauty in his angry eyes:
Rain added to a river that is rank
Perforce will force it overflow the bank. "

With those six verses from the poetry

"Venus and Adonis" of Shakespeare,

I give a metaphoric start to this analysis of

the movie "Siberia" of Matthew Ross;

as the flight of Lucas Hill (Keanu Reeves)

takeoff to St Petersburg, in which Lucas has

his habitudes, to do a diamond trade, after that

he received an e-mail from an associate .

He's drived until a village and becomes trapped

by his bisness, and by his desire growing for

Katya, a barmen owner of a café

in a little village in Russia.

Lucas Hill enters in a spiral made of goals from

others which will confront him to do some

choices to save his life, or to save the life

of his wife, and the life of Katya ;

as to take the responsability to have

made a sort of pact with the devil.

The story of the movie "Siberia" is symbolist but the treatment aesthetic is inspired by half some Neoclassical-Romantism of Karl Briullov , half "Russian fauvism" Kandinsky, half by the russian avant-garde Matiouchine , half by the realist russian movment of "The wanderers" , who worked on differents themes:

Landscape (Sarassov), realism social (Repin, Savinsky), portraits (Perov), genre paintings (Perov: "The hunters at rest), historism paintings (Ryabushkin).

The narration starts slowly like a stream

flowing towards the river that swirls and rushes

into the bowels of hell, and takes his power in

magnifying, keeping, destroying and purifying

everything in his movments, the obstacles,

the resistance of Lucas,

and the emotions of the characters.

The loneliness and the feeling to be

misunderstood by their entourage

bring togethers Lucas and Katya,

and that creates their complicity

to the point that Lucas Hill tells finally

to Katya his history with his wife and

his problems of diamond trade market .

But their false innocence showed and exchanged

in courtesy and their sweetness is shadowed by

their defaults: "pride, egoism, cupidity" for

Lucas and "perverse curiosity, masochism, pride,

cupidity too " for Katya, which lead them into

the "lake of fire" of luxury and lust in the palace

of Boris Volkov, the demon;

where Katya (Ana Ularu) will receive,

as in the poetry of Shakespeare,

the prophecy of the sentence,

after that her curiosity and her pride

pushed her to disobey and to join Lucas Hill

against his volonty during the diamond trade

with Boris Volkov (Pasha D. Lychnikoff).

Unfortunately the spiral goes faster and faster,

and the prophecy lead to the cruel sentence that

is the destiny. Even if another trader from

South Africa tried, in vain, to help and prevent

Lucas, a more powerfull darker intelligence

manipulates his tragic destiny.

As tells the witch in the Faust of Goethe :

"See, thus it’s done! Make ten of one, And two let be, Make even three, And rich thou ‘It be. Cast o’er the four! From five and six (The witch’s tricks), Make seven and eight,‘ Tis finished straight!, And nine is one, And ten is none. This is the witch’s once-one’s-one! " .

The 1 through the 9 = Magic Square of Saturne = the search of Faust for his rejuvenation = devil path because not perfect = plan B of God who transforms evil in good.

Like Faust, Lucas represents maturity too; Lucas searches the immortality symbolized by the diamonds, and so the rejuvenation too.

The number 10 = the one eye of God , and symbolise the mariage and so the masculine element sacrificing its Self to gives the gift of life symbolized by the seed.

The number 12 (12 diamonds) =12 000 verses in the Faust of Goethe = the conexion cosmic/ the Sacred Geometry of Alpha Solar System and Omega = old Mesopotamian text whose last lines would most probably designate our solar system:

in "Chaldean Astrology", Charles Virolleaud :

          The number of your heavenly bodies is twelve.
          The stations of your heavenly bodies are twelve.
          The complete months of the Moon are twelve.

"Siberia" of Matthew Ross is a good movie, with some good actors ; this movie is the little brother of the movie "The devil's advocate" of Hackford and of "Angel heart" of Alan Parker.

The main colors are: Blue, grey, yellow, red, green. ;

The main planets are: Venus, Mercure, Mars, Saturne, Moon.

Katya =Venus terrestrial (Love): Green

and Venus celestial (prostitution): Red (+ black /white). The colors red, black and white represent the social power since Antiquity and are the clues in two sexual Katya submission sequences: 1) with Lucas, 2) with Boris Volkov. Katya= Artemis when she wears her grey/silver jacket, and filled the bottles with milk.

Lucas = Mercure terrestrial: Brown

and Mercure celestial: Yellow

Lucas=Mercure = "Mercury is a being with a thousand facets. It usually goes for double. It is said of him that"he runs around the world and enjoys both good and bad." He's the "two dragons", he is the "twin", born of "two natures" or "substances". The two substances of the Mercury are conceived as different, even opposed : as a dragon he's "flying and without wings", and it is said of him in a parable:

" On this mountain is a dragon who always watches, named 'everywhere provided with eyes', because his body, on both sides, in front and behind, is full of eyes and he sleeps opening some of his eyes , closing the others ".

Mercury is made of "dry earth matter and wet viscosity, and one distinguishes in him the ordinary Mercury and the philosophical Mercury". Two elements are passive in him, namely the earth and the water, and two are active, the air and the fire. He is good and bad.

It is easy to identify the dragon who is "full of eyes" and who "sleeps opening some of his eyes, and closing some others""

(http://www.astroariana.com/L-Esprit-Mercure-de-C-G-Jung-une.html)

When Luca wears blue shirt and brown coat, some blue color around him = his passive calm, nice side but when some yellow color is around Lucas (+wind) = Active, violent, bad side of Lucas.

Lucas=Mercure=Adonis=hunter ; Lucas/Adonis= He spents his childhood in Hell.

Gabby (Molly Ringwald) = Persephone

"Myrrha was ashamed and regretful of her heinous act, and she pleaded to the gods to protect her. They answered her prayers by turning her into a Myrrh tree. Nine months later, the Myrrh tree split off, and Adonis was born; he had inherited the beauty of his mother.

When Aphrodite saw the boy, she was so amazed by his beauty that she decided to hide him from the rest of the goddesses , entrusted him to Persephone, goddess of the underworld."

Four different lights contrasts and colors

are used for each sexual sequences between

Katya and Lucas: 1) Blue/yellow /yellow gold

Blue (Lucas) representing the elements of water = divin/yellow = violence, bad side of Lucas.

Yellow gold = negative Katya as the Venus celestal = passion, adultery, betrayal +

the silver jacket + milk =Katya/Artemis.

2) black/white/red = social power/devil of Lucas on Katya/Venus (submission)

3) yellow/blue= Lucas in his duality ,

pink/green =Katya in her duality :

Duel of the two sides of the two characters.

4) yellow/pink=Mercure/Venus (air /air)= Harmony between Lucas and Katya.

Those sequences shows the evolutions of the devil possession by the sexuality , then by the love charm that Katya /Venus /Artemis is creating on Lucas, and the different emotional levels of their relationships, and of their mood and power on each others.

Lucas Hill doesn't show to the other characters of the story his real feelings nor his real volonty, to defend himself and to manipulate them until that he starts to feel love.

To express this, Keanu Reeves uses a "reflexive face" (Deleuze) in micro-movments and the game of the neutral mask: some of his feeling can be seen only in his eyes (mirror of soul) which are linked to the "face", the other parts of the face are the "body" , as did Gösta Ekman the actor in his Faust character. The spectators are placed volontarily by Keanu Reeves (Lucas Hill) as only watchers who are hooked under the same spell that Lucas endures, pushed with him in his fall.

Lucas Hill is handled by some spiritual as by some material influences, he is losing the control on his life and on the events ; he's under a spell, he's possessed by the goddess : Katya/Venus, and in the same time, he's challenged by the powerful Moïra: the destiny (which is above all the gods). He realises that he's loosing little by little his soul, so he will starts to change only at the end of the drama, forced by the trap, the force, the threats and then by the feel of love.

In this movie, Keanu Reeves plays a false innocent but a true perverted character, showing only to the spectators the weak side, the fragile side, the trapped side, the sacrificed side, of Lucas, to bring to light the story of this movie, using a "reflexive face" as a mirror for the watchers to bring timelessness , as an escape from the "Hors champs", from the environment, from the trap made by the other characters; but he uses too the neutral mask to keep with him the souls of the spectators manipulated, absorbed in reflections inside the darkness of Lucas. That impels the spectators to reject their sympathy for Lucas /Keanu, to feel the same need to escape as Lucas feels it; that is how Lucas/Keanu transfers his feeling and his spell to the spectators as if his spell was a disease that he spreads.

This manipulation pushes too the spectators to search more deeply in the movie, behind what we see in the first appearances, what are the real motivations of the characters ; and what are their own motivations as spectactors, as humans too in their societies, forcing them to discover their own perversions, to realise how much they're handled, as Lucas Hill is manipulated, by some invisibles forces which can take control of their destinies.

For those reasons, this movie is different that an usual american movie, and is closer of an european movie as the clues are inside the dialogues, and in the game of masks.

The spectators are so much used to see, in our period, some movies with a lot of special effects, or with a lot of intense direct emotions, that the movie "Siberia" puts the spectators in trouble, in discomfort, cause of its smart subtlety.

The character of Lucas is in perpetual multiple reflections, as if he was trapped inside a diamond, refleting himself in the other characters, as the spectators can reflects themselves in Lucas too, in hurting movments , in continuous motion, which escape from each others, in front of the mirrors that are the facets of a diamond, in false leaps, in "trompe l'oeil", in breaks.

Half real diamond, half false diamond.

His job, his temper, his spell makes Lucas/Keanu live a double lonely life, two differents lives: a life of slave misunderstood in his cold relationship with his wife, who knows his work in diamonds trades. His wife , representing Persephone is half "his mother superior", perhaps his boss too and half his wife; she has perhaps some responsability in the made of the trap toward Lucas.

The other side of his life exists in his bisness, and is made of some cruel dangerous perversions and is full of lust mores. Lucas/Keanu hides himself behind lies, behind the lust of this double life in secret, deep inside himself, without to can tell about it to anyone, without to find love.

He 's looking for someone to manipulate as well for save his diamond trade, in this new unknown village, as well he searches for sexuality ; and so he tries to manipulate Katya, which he thinks that she 's pure, and different of his wife, and of the women from town.

He used to buy love and interest, and that it's why he gave to Katya, the first time that they met in her pub, the money that the two guys who challenged him, didn't paid to Katya for their drinks, so Lucas pays the lost of money that his intervention made, and Katya tells to him at this moment : "You ,the american, you think that you can solve everything with money"; so she prevents him , that she's not so naive.

The symbolism of the candels are important too in the movie, it's the symbol of the soul.

So there's the theme of the karma , and of bad karma in this movie : Lucas is living, in the same time, a purification of his soul by his learning of love from Katya ; and he's receiving by his failed business which turns bad, a punishment cause of his past actions, cause of his lies to his wife, cause of his selfishness, cause of his vainness.

The blue color of the candels represents an ally in difficult situations that require a surpassing of himself and of his will.

Lucas is represented by the blue color too in his costumes, aura, candels and diamonds symbolizing his duality Christ/Devil; like his quadruple duality of Mercure/Adonis.

The two diamonds shown in the movie seem to be some 16/16 = 33 facettes = 33 powerful number = number double as the 10 and the 12 which can be mirror hours too. 33 = master number = Love, commitment, self sacrifice = age of death of the Christ. Christ=Adonis.

The two different diamonds, one false and one real, represents the duality in the soul of Lucas and in the soul of Katya too, in reflection face to face. Their honesty and their dishonesty. Also, those two diamonds, placed inside the two candels, represents the balance of the divine justice too, the choice that Lucas must do for his destiny (as well he must do the choice to leave or to stay at the last final act of the story of this movie.).

The soul of Katya who is double, is the symbol of the soulmate of Lucas, Venus is the soulmate of Mercury. Katya is half the symbol of Venus who is the goddess of love but who can be cruel too, and half the symbol of Artemis the goddess of the hunt. She represents the power of her village: she's the only owner of the only pub; her brothers and men of the village protect her as well they challenge her when they become as possessed by her beauty, symbolized by the drunkenness of the alcool, which is the mores for devotees of pagan gods in rural village ; as well is the tradition of the hunt .

They try to control Katya, as humans try to control gods and spirits. But Katya/Venus/Artemis is free and she controls, manipulates, seduces, and it's her who possesses and owns spiritually and materially her village and the control on the men in her village. She provockes the first reactions of protection from Lucas who defends her against their humiliations, then he gives to her his candel as a gift to a goddess; at this moment Lucas is already under the charms, under the control of Katya/Venus/Artemis, as well he wants to possess her.

The devil places love and false friendship in front of Lucas to control him, next he forces Lucas to do a pact, and by love to confront his enemies, then he takes his soul.

Another metaphorical nice representation of Katya is Calypso. The relationship between Katya and Lucas looks like too the connection of Calypso and Ulysse : because Calypso welcomes Ulysse on her island, gives to him a lodge in her home, and protects him, she's in love for him, but he thinks to his wife, and he must to return to live with his wife. But Calypso/Katya doesn't want that Ulysse/Lucas leaves her. Katya/Calypso asks about his age to Lucas, and she tests his love for her ; and she questions about his love for his wife, she's tormented by the love of Lucas/Ulysse for his wife.

In their relationship, there is the question of the age and the immortality: a diamond is symbol of a soul and of immortality. That is why the demon (Volkov) asks for 12 souls to Lucas, that he hasn't. And the Devil (fSB chief) ask to Lucas to sell falses diamonds / false souls, leading to the sacrifice of Lucas.

In "Venus and Adonis" poem , there's the theme of the immortality too. Adonis is related to the concept of agricultural civilizations . The theme of the hunt, in "Venus and Adonis" and in the movie "Siberia" is major ; becoming a metaphor of the devil coming to search the souls in this movie.

"Siberia" is written deliberately as half a medieval poem, a faustian tale , half an orphic legend, a Greek odyssey in the background; and is directed voluntarily with a pallet mixing the XIX, XX, XXI centuries of the russian art painting for the aestheticism of the movie, exposed by the choice of lights and colors, in a contemporary realistic story form.

The other interesting themes of the movie are:

the opposition between the mentalities, sexuality of people of the town and rural people ; opposition of trust and betrayal in relationships (in love, in friendship, and between USA/RUSSIA) ; the manipulation of sentimental and physical feelings as communication, to obtain material things and to spread their power.

The domination/submission between men and women, and between the differents power/social levels in our modern society.

The story of "Siberia" ends again like the two myths of Goethe and of Shakespeare:

Faust of Goethe : in the final sequence of the tragedy : "Faust lost his pact but his soul is caught in the higher circles - and only his body collapses at the feet of Mephistopheles.", exactly as in the movie "Siberia" , in which is added the thema of the hunt again. Also in "Venus and Adonis" of Shakespeare, Adonis is killed by a boar during a hunt.

"Venus an Adonis":

"'What should I do, seeing thee so indeed,
That tremble at the imagination?
The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed,
And fear doth teach it divination:
I prophesy thy death, my living sorrow,
If thou encounter with the boar to-morrow.

'But if thou needs wilt hunt, be ruled by me;
Uncouple at the timorous flying hare,
Or at the fox which lives by subtlety,
Or at the roe which no encounter dare:
Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs,
And on thy well-breath'd horse keep with thy
hounds.

'And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles
How he outruns the wind and with what care
He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles:
The many musets through the which he goes
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

'Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell,
And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer:
Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear:

'For there his smell with others being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,
Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled
With much ado the cold fault cleanly out;
Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies,
As if another chase were in the skies."

"'Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies. "

Vanessa Martinez

The apparition of the Virgin to St Luc and St Catherine

The apparition of the Virgin to St Luc and St Catherine

The name of the characters in the movie "Siberia" of M. Ross

are Lucas and Katya = LUC AND CATHERINE

= St Luc and St Catherine:

The apparition of the Virgin to St Luc and St Catherine

(as on the picture above).

Psalm LIII: "The form of exorcising the possessed"

(...) and diabolic possession page 213,

in The History of Witchcraft and Demonology:

"The Lesson of the Holy Gospel according to St Luke, X.17:

The seventy returned with joy...because your names are written in heaven.

The Lesson of the Holy Gospel according to St Luke, X14:

At that time : Jesus was casting out a devil , and it was dumb...Wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils.

Lord, hear my prayer,

And let my cry come unto Thee.

The Lord be with you,

and with thy Spirit."

(...)

The History of Witchcraft and Demonology

https://books.google.fr/books?id=hX69mYpAqpgC&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=lucas+name+symbol+demonologie&source=bl&ots=PCHGIG5E9z&sig=RLRLUt-0Ea9kwB3KIGrLggh0JeY&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3rc2z2bLcAhWPr6QKHdk8BBoQ6AEIhgEwFA#v=onepage&q=lucas%20name%20symbol%20demonologie&f=false

https://books.google.fr/books?id=hX69mYpAqpgC&lpg=PA213&ots=PCHGIG5E9z&dq=lucas%20name%20symbol%20demonologie&hl=fr&pg=PA213#v=onepage&q=lucas%20name%20symbol%20demonologie&f=false

Vanessa Martinez