Kafka, le dernier été

I saw this at a German club's film night. The 100th anniversary of K's death was being commemmorated. I conversed with another senior who, like me, went through a Kafka phase before going through a Hermann Hesse phase.

For that purpose, this is a fairly appealing little film. But it is too pedestrian and predictable to succeed as filmcraft. There is irony in making such an upbeat film about that most profound of pessimists. It struck me that Sur la plage de Chesil (2017) is the film this tries but utterly fails to be.

There is always a tension between live action biopics and documentaries. When a lot of visual material exists, the documentary can easily be more worth our time. I recommend the Franz Kafka Documentary, on the Author Documentaries YouTube channel..