Plausible Deniability
Franz is a scrapbook biopic.
Grade: F
Franz Kafka’s work grants any film about him an iron-clad excuse to not make sense. Agnieszka Holland, director of the new Kafka biopic Franz, makes full use of that excuse. Holland sets her Kafka, played by Idan Weiss, on a meandering trek from Kafka’s boyhood to his death from tuberculosis in 1924. Franz is a cinematic sermon in which Holland and screenwriter Marek Epstein are preaching to the converted. It does little if anything to convince Kafka sceptics that Kafka deserves his status as a great writer. Simultaneously, it’s a Kafka trivia game for those already familiar with his biography executed in the style of his fiction for those who already worship it.
Franz is a scrapbook biopic. It’s very similar to this year’s Michael Jackson biopic Michael, as strange as it might sound to compare Kafka to the King of Pop. Like Michael, Franz is yet another biopic that seems it was made not to tell a story but to let a fan stage all their favourite episodes from the life of an artist they love. Holland shows you Kafka’s mistreatment by his overbearing father Hermann Kafka, played by Peter Kurth, Kafka’s boring job in an insurance office, Kafka reading his short story “In the Penal Colony,” Kafka visiting brothels, his engagement, his breakup with his fiancé, etc, etc. One instance follows another with no thread connecting them but Kafka’s presence. The Kafka of Franz is a protagonist without a story.
“Your film makes no sense.” Say this to anyone who makes a film about Kafka and they can reply “It’s appropriate for the subject matter.” You won’t be able to rebut that. Kafka’s work makes no sense. His protagonists are tried for crimes they’re never told about (The Trial), suddenly turn into bugs for no reason (The Metamorphosis) and try to gain entry to places where the rules for gaining entry are never clear (The Castle). His work is dogged by a persistent absence of any logic or purpose. Thus, any filmmaker casting his life up on the screen is granted an artistic plausible deniability. They can make a film in a Kafkaesque style because it’s a film about Kafka.
You’ll be scratching your head all through this film. When you’re not scratching it over what the film’s about, you’ll be scratching it over if even Holland herself knows what it’s about. The film shapeshifts from scene to scene. One minute, Kafka’s friends and relatives are talking to the camera like Holland’s interviewing them for a documentary. The next minute, Holland’s yanked Kafka from his native early 20th century Prague to Prague today where there are Kafka tours, the Kafka museum and even Kafka burger shops. Is this a straight, traditional biopic? Is it a fictionalised documentary? Is it some trippy, time-bending genre mashup? The answer eludes you and Kafka fans will tell you “Of course it does. It’s Kafkaesque.”
Idan Weiss makes the film semi-tolerable. He plays Kafka in all his moods and forms with complete yet understated conviction. He is Kafka the absurdist clown laughing at a leaking roof. He is Kafka the bullied son casting his eyes down to the floor when his father shouts at him. He welcomes motion and stillness into his face while ensuring neither looks like a stranger. Weiss’s adorable chameleon talents will remind you of silent film actors like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton who behaved like are flesh and blood versions of C-3PO: animatronic but not rusted or dead and able to become angry and sad – CLICK - like that, as if on the turn of a gear, but to do so without it appearing fake.
Does Weiss justify the $25 ticket and the approximately two hours you sit watching him plod from scene to scene, while Holland slowly saps you of any hope that the next scene will be more interesting? Unfortunately not.