Agnieszka Holland’s Playful, Moving Kafka Biopic, Franz
Agnieszka Holland’s Franz offers a nuancedโข and surprisinglyโฃ playful portrait of the iconic writer, Franz Kafka. The film navigates the complexities of Kafka’s life, from his fraught romanticโข entanglements toโ his intellectual pursuits and deeply felt Jewish identity, while acknowledging the paradoxical commercialization of his image in modern-day Prague.
The film thoughtfully depicts moments from Kafka’s life,โ including his habitual rest spot on a riverbank after swimming – a location significant to the adult Kafka. โIt also highlights his prolific letter-writing, brought to life by Idan Weiss, whose performance is lauded as aโข subtle and โขremarkably โaccurate portrayal โof the author. A sceneโ at the Kafka Museum,โ featuring a tour guide (Emma Smetana), underscores the sheer volume of critical โmaterial about Kafka, which substantially outweighs the weight of his personal papers.
Holland embraces the irony of kafka’s current status as a cultural icon inโ Prague,showcasing the abundance of Kafka-themed restaurants,statues,tours,and souvenirs. However,Franz strives for a more complete โunderstanding of the man,revealing his intellect,sense of humor – exemplified by a scene where he reads passages from The Trial to an amused audience – and complex emotional life.
A significant portion of the film focuses on Kafka’s turbulent relationships with women. It explores his โconnection with Felicie bauer (Carol Schuler), a Berlin-based relative of Max Brod to whom he proposed, โขand the subsequent, bewildering parallel pursuit ofโ Felicie’s friend, Grete Bloch (Gesa Schermuly), documented in a series of letters. The film also portrays his later, more fulfilling relationship with married journalist Milena Jesenska (Jenovefa Bokova).
despite its two-hour-plus โฃruntime, Franz maintains a dynamic โคpace, aided by Tomasz Naumiuk’s cinematography, which frequently employsโค both fluid movement and static framing, especially within the Kafka family home. This stylistic choice emphasizes the author’sโ need for โsolitude to pursue his writing. The film’s soundscape, composed by Mary Komasa and Antoni Komasa Lazarkiewicz and supplemented by โmusic from Trupa Trupa, serves as a unifying element, connecting the film’s non-linear narrative and lending a contemporary feel.Ultimately,the film’s success rests on Idan Weiss’s โcompelling performance,capturing Kafka’s intensity,playfulness,and underlying tenderness. Franz also avoids simplistic interpretations of Kafka’s โฃidentity, acknowledging his Jewish heritageโ andโข Zionist beliefs without pandering to any specific audience. The filmโค acknowledges the tragic fate of much of Kafka’s familyโข in the Holocaust,though this unfolds after his death and is not a โcentral focus.
Aโ tense scene near the film’s conclusion, depicting Max Brod’s narrow escape from a โคGestapo officer whileโข carrying Kafka’s โขmanuscripts, powerfully illustrates the rise of fascism – a phenomenon Kafka presaged in his work.Like Kafka’sโ writings, the โคfilm itself offers a “distilled, abstracted meditation on power,โ the law, control and desire that transcends the banal โคborders of realism.”