If nothing else, ”Franz“Getting the handwriting right. Sure, to praise someone’s calligraphy, the decisive backhanded compliment is, but when it comes to Kafka, Penmanship is important. The Czech literary titan was known to prefer to write longhand, even after the explosion of the typewriter. Agnieszka Hollands fever new biopik on Kafka There is often itself to pour over their desk or sneak glimpses from their love letters. In a surreal tableaux, these sides swirl on the stairs to his dedicated museum in modern times Praguetrampled by visitors as they pass by. It is as if, by convincing Simulacra from the past, she can discover any hidden aspect of the man buried by popular culture and the goldfish memory of history.
But these pages are nothing but solid replicas. They are superficial deals to a shallow hagiography, a unfortunately suitable microcosm of the rest of film. “Franz” is a total incorrect fire – outrageous and bland to the same extent. Almost every stylish escape by Fancy that decorates the frame is a distraction while the majority of the film does a little more than rotating dramatizes Kafka’s biography.
The last point is no exaggeration. The Netherlands and Marek Epstein’s script regulate inhale an aggregate fact sheet in Kafka’s life. It feels like there is not a single event, desire or character trait that is demonstrated by any individual in the film that is not shown on Kafka’s Wikipedia page. We follow Kafka from his early readings through his dry, long -distance questions with countless women, until his possible death from tuberculosis. There are temporary flashbacks to his childhood, as well as moments in advance, where Kafka is located in the modern Czech Republic, but none of this relieves the stimulation dolder in a conventional biopic. This is aggravated by a script that condenses events to the point where no artistic freedoms can reasonably suit. At a single, two minute dinner, Hermann Kafka crushes a cockroach while he denies his son’s commitment to Felice Bauer before repeating his dissatisfaction for Franz’s writer. Ironically, given its subject, the structure of “Franz” is finally unmatched.
This letter extends throughout the picture. The actors seem to have been chosen based on their similarities alone. The costume department ensures to recreate all clothing worn in available photos of real counterparts. Each time the dialogue threatens to become beautiful, it turns out to be a direct quotation from Kafka’s own writing, transferred to relaxed conversation. Often, primary sources are transformed from those around him to monologues delivered directly to the camera, similar to a talking head in a documentary. The selected extracts are uniformly sad and sycofantic, but here is the first example of many stylistic errors. The implication of this motive is that a camera has collapsed time; that it has mainly called these tertiary figures for interviews. In fact, this is just a trope of Mondo films – or, less charity, mockumentaries. A moment where Franz’s sister catches her hair on a branch and mugs the camera got the idea: “Has anyone involved seen” the office? ”
Agneiszka Holland is obviously no hack, and she has not necessarily dropped her touch at dusk in her career (“Green Border” premiered two years ago to a widespread praise). However, she is a maximalist, to both her advantage and disadvantage. This is obvious in the film’s best scene, a dramatization of “In the penalty colony.” Setpiece is brutally horrible, dark comical and viscerally ambitious. It not only evokes what made Kafka unique, but also how his sensitivity has spread through all the art genres during the last century, from the Surrealists in the 20th century to the Grindhouse cinema that followed a few decades later. Here and nowhere else, Holland treats Kafkas Oeuvre not as abstract feed for Pithy Musing, but as texts published at a real point in history, which came from a person’s mind and not a divine leadership.
Unfortunately, few pay off Holland’s other Gambits. To an increasing extent over his two hour driving time, I found myself asking a single question: Why? Why is every fifth shot a crash zoom? Why does a cherry that dangle above a fallen Franz’s lips seem to look up when he peeks up the skirts to some girls? Why show Franz who plays tug of naked on a sanitarium with a lot of men wearing animal masks? Why include a joke in which Americans, who cannot appreciate his genius, are drooling into a tourist trap called “Kafka Burgers”? Why are there several anachronistic Polish indie rock -drops? It is not the symbolic meaning of these moments is difficult to analyze. It is that they are so superfluous, so clumsy, so disastrously stupid, that I am stunned that they made it a finished project.
Perhaps this is particularly noticeable because the film’s thematic busy is so trite. If Holland has any new insights into Franz Kafka – like man, artist or icon – they are completely absent here. Despite the film’s focus on his romantic try, it remains strictly away from his own neuroses about intimacy. There are repeated nods to Kafka’s Jewish identity, although there is no bill on how this has shaped the perception and influence of his work in the following century. Despite constant comments about how Kafka’s stories spoke to the public, Holland is reluctant to illustrate all the details. Never deviates anyone in the movie from their predetermined archetype; Never deviates Kafka, Holland’s invention, from Kafka, legend. Here, a simple man and canon artist is made yet another sexually frustrated, misunderstood, tortured genius. There is a core of an idea in this ethos, that all attempts to know such a culturally heart inevitably result in trying to reject. Unfortunately, it does not feel like a conscious goal with the film.
There is little to recommend “Franz” directly, although I will admit that I did not have a bad time with it. The movie is pulsating with an old-school arrogance that I find charming. It has a sincere belief that Kafka is one of the most important figures ever alive. It believes in the enviable martyrdom of the lonely artist. It has a young Franz in a prison cell, on a stage, surrounded by mirrors, as one or two visual metaphors would not have been sufficient. It is certainly a failure, but it has twice the soul and passion for many technically successful images from minor artists. If only that was enough.
Rating: D+
“Franz” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2025. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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