Franz

In the past ten years, the biopic has been beaten into the ground. From Freddy Mercury to the man who invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, anybody who is anybody gets a movie about their life. Big celebrities make sense, they draw in crowds on recognizability. Historical figures are often harder to market, since you don’t want it to come off as a boring history documentary. The Imitation Game and Oppenheimer are examples of this done well. However, we haven’t gotten any films on famous writers in the past couple of years. Franz takes a brick, throws it at the sugar-coated celebrity biopic wall, paints it with lipstick, smashes it with a hammer, and urinates on it for good measure.

Agnieszka Holland’s Kafka follows Franz Kafka (Idan Weiss) as we get non linear events in his life. From his rough childhood to writing some of his most famous short stories to his death of tuberculosis, we see it all on full display.

Weiss admittedly does a fantastic job as the writer. He has a very layered performance and carries most of the film on his back. Peter Kurth as Franz’s father is also a fantastic performance. The cinematography itself is also a highlight. This film looks great, it's technically really well done and some experimental parts are favorable. The first shot especially with a young Kafka getting his hair cut has a nice transition to him as an adult. Untraditional choices make it so that I want to enjoy the film, but it has some major flaws holding it back.

One major thing is the lack of subtlety throughout the film. I don’t mind loud films, Cabaret is an example I think of this done really well. But the constant crash zooms, breaking of the fourth wall, and attempts at social commentary get a bit tiring after a while. There is a scene where Franz is checked into a sanatorium and inside are a group of fully naked men doing exercises in a line. This adds nothing and frankly has no point other than to shock.

The tone is also all over the place as well. I think this is due to the fact that the film does not slow down. We get funny moments like when Franz and his friend are having sex with prostitutes and trying to discuss religion at the same time. But then we’ll shift to the abuses suffered from his father or the holocaust and it just does not gel. While these are things that did happen in Franz Kafka’s life, mixing it with the absurdist humor and glittery aesthetics of the film makes the whole thing feel odd.

The film also cuts back and forth to the present at the Kafka museum in the Czech Republic. We get scenes of tourists taking in parts of Kafka’s life in perversion. Not only do I believe we got too many of these scenes but they did not serve the greater story. They were put in to show the obsession some people have with historical figures despite how private they may have been in real life, and how as a society we sometimes turn them into capital. While I believe that this is an interesting idea, the film is already so stretched as it is that these scenes just make the whole film drop dead in its tracks and shouts “Hey! Isn’t this bad? Aren’t we bad people for making merchandise of a man who died miserably of tuberculosis and was mentally ill?” It’s just lazy and not very thought provoking.

Franz is an enigma. It feels both too long and devoid of substance. It drags but is also extremely spasmodic. It feels like Holland wanted to make a film that was Kafkaesque. An ultimate tribute to what I assume is her favorite writer. But sadly, the film comes off as quite the mess. If you're a fan of Kafka’s work, I don’t think this is the film for you. If you aren’t a fan, this is definitely not for you.