Kafka, la verdad oculta

Many filmmakers have often failed when attempting to adapt the work of writer Franz Kafka (most famously Orson Wells), so it comes as quite a surprise to see Steven Soderbergh mixing his life and fiction with fantastic results. The story concerns Kafka (a never better Jeremy Irons) investigating the disappearance of one of his work colleagues. The plot takes Kafka through many of the writer's own works, most notably "The Castle" and "The Trial"...

With his follow up to the cool indie hit Sex, lies and videotape (1989) Soderbergh switches both style and ideas completely, creating an evocative and ethereal world of 1920 Prague, full of shadows and bizarre mutations. He also employs shifts between colour and black and white film stock, to give the film a more dreamlike feel.

Visually it is similar to another film from the same year, Lars Von Trier's Europa (1991), which also was about a man searching for the truth. But Kafka is more accessible, being both a gripping thriller and in some ways a black comedy. But however you choose to look at it, there is no denying Kafka's ability to amaze and enthral.

Well, I viewed this Soderbergh vignette of the motifs, and fictionalization of some of the facts in the life of K. I must say that although I preferred Daniel Day-Lewis's T.V. rendition in the Insurance Man {1986}, I am a big fan of Jeremy Irons {loved his Cronenberg Dead Ringers "tour de force"} and always find his image arresting. I have a slight reservation about his look in this movie. What was particularly impressive acting-wise was the interaction between Sir Alec Guinness and Irons and later in the climax when the great Ian Holms and Irons battle it out for the heart and mind of Humanity - when Kafka declares "I merely write about Nightmares but you create them" I thought that the whole scenario when Kafka enters the Castle and encounters the labyrinthine corridors, the endless doors, the multitude of bureaucrats, culminating in a finely rendered Hitchcockian chase involving shadows, clocks and a precarious {edge-of-seat} balancing act on a glass-dome - powerful movie muti. I could see the movie clearly in my head over 24 hours later. You need not know anything about Kafka in order to enjoy this movie about an alienated young man who has taken an unambitious clerkship as a result of qualifying as a lawyer and now imagines himself a writer to escape the dreariness of his tasks. His hunger for the catharsis of worldly pleasures leads him to bohemian outlets which in turn leads to more radical connections { where he delivers his quintessential challenge to the writing profession "I don't write for others, I write for myself"}. The "femme fatale" is interestingly portrayed by Theresa Russell, who manages to combine the intellectual virago with a sensual ooze which contrasts well with Kafka's distracted isolation - I found it quite plausible that these two had an attraction for each other. This film offers a variety of content and substance. All that can happen if you give it a viewing is that you might learn more about the "Human Condition" Can that be such a bad thing?

Steven Soderbergh's cult "Kafka" is not a biopic of writer Franz Kafka, yet it has references of his works such as "The Castle", passages of his life (where he tells to a friends to burn his manuscripts away without showing his writings to the public) and a main character who happens to be a writer named Kafka.

The extremely shy Kafka (Jeremy Irons) works in a bureaucratic place where he also writes to himself a few stories and some letters to his father. In this same place he only has one friend, a guy named Edward Raban who disappeared mysteriously. Kafka starts a strange journey trying to figure out what happened to his friend entering in a dangerous game with some strange figures such as Edward's lover and Kafka's co-worker (Theresa Russell) and her revolutionary friends; a very friendly figure who knows too much (Jeroen Krabbé); Grubach a police inspector (Armin Mueller-Stahl); and some of his own work colleagues such as his new assistants (Keith Allen and Simon McBurney), his estranged boss (Alec Guinness) and the annoying Mr. Burgel (Joel Grey); and at last Dr. Murnau (Ian Holm).

In a magnificent performance Jeremy Irons makes of his Kafka a man suffocated by the environment where he lives and the only way to escape of it it's to write stories that reflect his life in an awkward way and/or his life as an "investigator" that took him to darker places that could have been a source of inspiration for his works. The movie goes to tell us that he lived in a bizarre and very surrealistic place with surrealistic figures all around him and they were always trying to watch his next step, what he was doing and Kafka run away from this people, hides his writing works. This is a good thriller material!

Soderbergh makes of "Kafka" a good humored film noir that has a great mystery to be solved, the rhythm of the film is intertwined with some slow paced moments where you can pause your brain to solve some of the puzzles, a frantic suspense that goes to complete a surrealistic plot. The final result is a great movie with nothing obvious and it makes good homages to Kafka's work, and homages to another classic films. It is an interesting cross between "The Third Man" and "Brazil", the visual of those two films combined along with the almost colorless Kafka's books are put together in here.

Walt Lloyd's cinematography is one of the most interesting and effective work ever made in film history, a photography that goes from black and white to color in a great way, showing these two worlds that seem to distant so each other when in fact they're close enough. In this case you can sense that the colorful world presented in the castle isn't better than the oppressive grey world outside of its dominions, the colors are presented only to tell us a frightening reality that is so shocking that we really want to go back to the black and white world along with Kafka. And as a great mind said one time: "The black and white doesn't lie".

Unnoticed in its time "Kafka" is a cult film that must be revered by everyone and must of all revered by Kafka's fans even though this is not a biographical movie, it's more like a film that reveals more of his persona and an invitation to visually penetrate to his own creations. Or don't you think that we don't live in a Kafkanian nightmare in a Kafkanian world? 10/10

If you're an actual fan of Kafka, I would recommend steering clear of this one. If you're not, then I would say that this is the kind of film that people watch and say, "Wow, that's the kind of movie that makes you think," which is one of the dumbest things I think that can be said about a film. Such films, I have found, tend to bring up rather crude and elementary ideas and toss them out as something profound. (If a film really does make you think, you don't say so, because you probably watch films like that all the time anyway. So a movie which doesn't have the soundtrack running every 30 seconds is not new to you). If you think that Orwell's 1984 is a profound book, then you'll think this movie is enjoyable. If you know better, then you probably won't.

I didn't find Kafka (the film) very engaging at all. It did not make many attempts at subtle references to his works, which would have been fun at least. The closest we get is two assistants working for him in his office (The Castle), and Irons at one point is asked what he's working on and says a book about a man who wakes up to find himself turned into an insect. Of course there's the castle in the movie, etc.., but these are so obvious that they're dull. Small references to his life are also made, such as his asking Brod to destroy his works, he starts coughing up blood at the end, etc..

Kafka the film is like a decent landscape painter's works, you look at them, say oh that's nice, and move on to the next one. They lack the profound melancholy of a Friedrich, or the tempestuous battle of the elements, as in a Turner. Something within the soul of the artist which infuses his work with a meaning deeper than a mere reproduction of nature or his social environment.

What's missing in Kafka the film is what makes Kafka the author appealing. His books are not simple lessons about the dangers of totalitarianism or any such easily conjured up enemy. It's the existential torment of the protagonist which is so captivating. Whether Kafka is struggling with God, or authority, or bureaucracy, or modernity, is fun to bat around, but not the essential point.

The film is sophomoric, because rather than focus on or depict this struggle, it turns Kafka into some sort of prophet waging war against ideological biology and the democratization of mankind's soul. Can you read that into him? Perhaps. But don't turn an incredibly unique and profound author into a neo-Marxist political science major writing for the college newspaper.

What disturbed me the most about the film was that they had the gall to go into the castle and explain to you what was inside. The whole point of Kafka's work is that we DIDN'T KNOW what was going on there. So we get ushered into the castle and given an 8th grade ethics class. Pathetic.

This is a somewhat curious film, attempting to be old-fashioned - in the sense that we have varying strands from an early-twentieth century writer, as well as setting, production design and various visual iconography - yet at the same time striving for a sense of post-modernist reinvention. So, what we end up with is a stunning, self-referential combination of the 'look' (which mixes elements of Carol Reed's The Third Man and Welles' Citizen Kane), with elements of the steam-punk sub-genre of films like Eraserhead, Brazil, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Barton Fink, etc . The story also concerns itself with the notions of the film-noir, both in terms of characterisation, narrative tension and visual design.

So, with Kafka (1991), we not only have the externally referential - of Kafka writing a story, whilst simultaneously involving himself in a real-life plot that will, in turn, become the story he is writing (The Castle) - but also the internal references to Kafka's own biographical history; from his job at the insurance company, to the difficult relationship with his father, and also his failed love affair etc. In the lead role we have one of Britain's most competent actors, Jeremy Irons, who, although never looking exactly like Kafka, does at least manage to embody the quiet, stubborn, meticulous spirit of the writer (or, at least the image that we have of him). His performance is one of complete restraint, far removed from some of his more caricatured performances of recent years, as he offers up a mirrored perspective for the audience; lingering in the background of the scene and simply reacting to what is going on around him (again, a popular device from Kafka's work).

Director Steven Soderbergh compliments and visualises the screenplay by Lem Dobbs exceptionally well, drawing on the aforementioned influences in a similar, post-modernistic way to their subsequent 1999 collaboration, The Limey. Soderbergh also offers us a depiction of a crumbling Europe thrown into confusion, creating a fully functioning world, much like Ridley Scott did with Blade Runner - offering us an illustration of the past by way of the future - or a depiction of Europe in decline to rival that of Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), von Trier's Europa (1991) and Soderbergh own subsequent film, The Good German (2006). So, whereas most films are content to create, or in this case recreate, early-twentieth century iconography in which the past is as pristine and shockingly brand-new, as if it were created only a yesterday, here we get a past that is dirty, grimy, filled with smoke, fog and dust; in short... totally believable.

This is a film the people expect too much coherency from; something that Soderbergh's continual mainstream success has only damaged further. As more and more cinema-goers come to adore films like Oceans 11 (2000), Traffic (2001) and Solaris (2002), they come to Kafka expecting a mainstream Hollywood thriller. Kafka couldn't be further from this. Here is an intelligent film that draws on the audience's understanding of European cinema and, to some extent, Kafka's own literary back-catalogue in order to piece together the film's central mystery. The main reference point is Kafka's book The Castle; here featured as an imposing fortress atop a shadowy hill. Inside, Kafka finds Ian Holm's mad scientist and the film switches to glorious Technicolor. There are also allusions made to The Trail, with Armin Mueller-Stahl's detective doggedly questioning Kafka's whereabouts and the integrity of his 'story' (an important factor within the film's internal struggle), as well as a direct reference to The Metamorphosis and some of the writer's more abstract shorter pieces.

Soderbergh and Dobbs aren't concerned with pandering to anyone here; they allow the story to remain, much like Kafka himself, an enigma. The story grips us like film-noir should, and Soderbergh keeps us enthralled with his constantly inventive camera work. This is a perfect film that deals with notions of fact and fiction, dreams and reality. The filmmakers respect our intelligence; they understand that some question can remain unanswered and film can work better as a result of this. Whether or not you believe the story to have taken place entirely in Kafka's head (note how the last shot of the film sees Kafka at his writing desk) or whether you see it as the mirroring of fact and fiction is entirely up to you. With fine support from Theresa Russell, Jeroen Krabbé and Alec Guinness, coupled with an exotic Cliff Martinez score, what we have with Kafka is one of the best and most underrated films of the nineteen nineties. A unique experience.