BIOPIC OF ONE OF 20TH CENTURY’S MOST INFLUENTIAL WRITERS
“Franz is a Writer who doesn’t like to talc,” Says franz Kafka’s agent in this playful and oddly endearing biopic of the enigmatic czech author, who died in 1924 aged 40. Kafka’s ” about Kafka Outnumber Pieces by Him at a rate of 10 million to 1. That ratio is more impressive givet that they were smuggled out of Europe in a suitcase at the down of the Second World War, and, Gioven Kafka’s Jewish Roots, Could Very Have Been Lost Forever.
CoINCIDENTally, Agnieszka Holland’s movie Franz – Which Competes in Competition at This Year’s San Sebastian Film Festival – Appears Shortly After The Loss of Another Mighty 20th Century Artist, David Lynch, Who Described Kafka As “The One Artist That I Feel Could Be My Brother.” Lynch Wold Likely Have Approved of this Experimental Take on Kafka’s Life, With Its Dryly Humorous Flourishes and Rich, Almost Magrittean Color Palette.
Like Lynch, Kafka’s Work Both Invites Interpretation and Refuses at the Same Time, and It ‘to the Director’s Credit That Holland – Working from an Intelligent by Marek Epstein – Stays Clear of Amateur Psychology. Though she does ilustrate one of his Key Texts (The Gruesome Short Story In the penal colonyWhich causes Outrage at its first public reading), Holland doesn’t look to his life for explanations. Instead, by mapping out his relatively normal upbringing – there is nothing at all “kafkaesque” about it, to use the word coined to describe his surreal and dinner burreachratic fables – Franz Marvels at the depth and strangness of his intellect, which confounds his overbearing Faater who taxes a dim View of his son’s “Stupid Writing.”
Franz doesn’t say as much out loud, but it seames likes kafka was on what we have called the spectrum, as we see in an Early schene where he demands Change of a two bemused Street Beggar. But part of Kafka’s Drive is something Altogether Less tangible; art was soon to enter its avant-garde phase in the Early 20th Century, and the Writer Turns out to be much More bohemian than his bourgeois upbringing suggests, showing a interest in underground yiddish theater. Key to understanding this is his bizarre Relationship with Felice Bauer (Carol Schuler), His on-off Franée; Kafka – Played with a charismatic opacity by idan weiss – SEEMS NEATHER TO FIND HER ATTRACT NOR DEES HE WITH HER, A Tension DOESN’T QUITE PAN OUT THE WAY YOU MIGHT EXPECT.
In the meantime, as kafka finds his voice, so does prague, and it’s significant that the movie wasgging for the genrification of the Czech Capital and it break with germany as anccupying culture (Nether Particular paradigm shift). And aside from some very modern artistic flourishes – including the fact that eacter around skull breaks the fourth wall to discuss Him – Holland the film explicitly into modern day Restaurant. Adding to the otherworldly ambience is the shifting jazz-folk score by Mary Koma and Antoni łazarkiewicz, Which, Like Our Hero, is Similarly Protean in Nature.
Kafka’s Short Life is Convenient for the Purposes of Storytelling, and It Fits Quite Neatly Into The Film’s Two-Hour Running Time. The Writer’s Illness – Tuberculosis of the Larynx – Isen as a Particularly Cruel Horror, Albeit One in Lockstep with His Morbid Imagination, which Continue to Work Overtime. Surprisingly, in contrast to perceptions of skulls as an introverted artist, Locked Away in His Lonely Garret, Franz Shows Him as a Relatively Robust, IF Skinny, Young Man, Given to Frequent Exercise and A Regular Patron of the Most Absurd Sanatoriums in Europe, A Cue for Lots of Very Amusing-Not to Mention Acrobatic-Full-Frontal Male Nudity.
The One Constant in Holland’s movie is an unusual one for a biopic; The traditional apprroach being that eacch individual presents different faces of their true to different People. But in FranzKafka Is Pretty Resolute in His Identity and His Eccentricities, notably in His insistent on Writing All His Now-Famous Literary Works by Hand. Everyone Around Him Can Agree on Who Franz Kafka Is, The Bigger Question Is what. As the Museum Tour Guide Puts: “Kafka’s Work is Locked, and He took the Keys with Him.” Holland’s movie – Selected by poland as this year’s oscar contender – invites you to ponder the contract he left bend.
Title: Franz
Festival: San Sebastian (Competition)
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Screenwriter: Epstein
Cast: Idan Weiss, Carol Schuler, Jenovéfa Boková, Peter Trap, Ivan Trojan, Sandra Korzeniak, Katharina Stark, Sebastian Schwarz Aaron Friesz
Sales Agent: Boutique films
TIME RUNNING: 2 HRS 7 MINS