OPINION: Draws us on high

The story of “Faust” has always been fascinating for me, an old German tale about a man driven to deal with the devil for either magic powers, eternal life or love, although what Faust wants can change depending on the tale. The story ends in two ways based on time or author; he either finds forgiveness through God, or he is sentenced to eternally serve the devil.

Faust is a desperate character, close to death or failure, whose only path he sees is suicide. He sells his personal being into servitude, but as his term comes to end, he finds if he’s either forgiven or facing damnation in hell. In the original writing (translated from the original language of German) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his two-part play, he ends a 12,000 line play with the following two lines:

The eternal-feminine

Draws us on high.

Plaguing his reality throughout the play, Faust has seen images of what he saw as “godlike female form[s],” that ascend into the sky. Goethe’s meaning can be interpreted as seeing the pure soul as a feminine concept, free of evil and full of divine wisdom. The eternal feminine is a cosmic power and ideal Goethe sees as a universal goal of both men and women.

Faust is a man who has gravely sinned but seeks forgiveness anyways at the end of his term with the devil. He finds himself drawn to a contributed idea of pure forgiveness which is contributed by the women in the story, who serve as metaphors for female gods such as Aphrodite and Minerva.

The devil is always male, which is important to understand why Faust would see something devoid of sin as feminine. His engagement with sin gives him power, but his only wish is to absolve himself and embrace this eternal feminine.

Last weekend I saw the wonderful “Longlegs.” It’s a hypnotic horror piece about a serial killer who mysteriously forces his victims to kill each other and themselves. Functioning as a crime procedural, this investigation of who the serial killer is and how he kills is seen through the eyes of a female FBI agent named Lee Harker as she descends further down a supernatural goose chase.

Harker is clairvoyant, she has a tendency to solve cases on impossible hunches. She has no idea why this is the case, and it’s never explained explicitly why. As she rises through the ranks of the FBI in the ‘90s, she adapts to a world that never seems to accept her presence, especially in her male-dominated industry. A notable line where a young girl who seems too smart for her age asks Harker a question, “Is it hard being a lady FBI agent?” which Harker answers with a quick, succinct and undramatic “yes.”

Twists and turns, scares and close calls, Harker navigates an investigation that starts randomly including parts of her life. Satanic iconography and strange obsessions with dolls and ciphers are unraveled until the reveal of a Faust-like deal finally reveals the supernatural threat that was there all along.

America is an inherently religious nation, pledging to remain patriotic “under God,” so the way we interpret the supernatural comes from an angle of breaking our normalized view of scripture-originating decency. The way we treat one another comes from the words of saints and pastors, the good deeds of Jesus or disciples as acts to mimic.

“Longlegs” is horrifying, not because it jumps at you and makes you wet your pants, but instead crawls into your brain as slow churnings of dread. Dark lighting gives way to tantalizingly gorgeous visual language. Absurd moments with the titular serial killer “Longlegs” push the boundary of believability, but it rocks.

Without speaking too specifically on the ending, the ideas of the ending of Goethe’s “Faust” with the eternal feminine and this movie are intertwined, looking through the idea of a deal with the devil with a feminist lens. Gender is vital to the movie, especially with a deal that functions under a modern, god-fearing age. Love, keeping another’s sense of self, twisting the eternal feminine; under the circumstances, how could anyone refuse?

To see a movie like this in the middle of summer is electrifying, and to see it somehow claim second at the box office is triumphant. In an age where cheap horror has brought boring slop without an interest in camp to the box office, “Longlegs” springs with an illusionist’s dance of thoughtful interpretation and real, haunting dread.