Introduction to Biopics
The biopic is a vulgar but necessary tribute, which naturally pays populist cinema for more traditional art with higher brows. Scientists and snobs could spin in these films and in particular the way they love to transform a childhood trauma into creative drive, all in the service of a proper narrative arch. But we also love them secretly, especially if they are a little sticky and preferably accurate enough to offer the cinematic equivalent of a well-graded Wikipedia page or for the more serious scientific biography. It helps if the topic not only admires and talented, if not likeable, has a dramatic and interesting life, like the mentally unbalanced painter Vincent van Gogh. Even better: a life that we know very little about how playwright and poet William Shakespeare to create a lot of space for fictional invention.
The Life of Franz Kafka
In view of the fact that the writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was not famous in his life, it is remarkable that we know as much about him. In fact, it is a miraculous coincidence that we know his work at all because he has instructed his friend and executor Max Brod to destroy all his writings and personal letters after his death. Fortunately, Brod was in a way the worst literary executor in the world – even though he risked his life at points to smuggle the work from Czechoslovakia.
The Biopic "Franz"
Agnieszka Holland’s excellent new biopic, "Franz", is a great example of how to make a biopic about a writer’s life. The film is a ludic, kaleidoscopic montage that jumps back and forth in the life of the subject and beyond. The structure never feels accidental; there are obvious causal connections. For example, we see that the boy Kafka is "taught" to swim by his father by being forced to sing or swim (he drops). This scene follows tourists directly today a river bank, on which the adult Kafka would always rest after swimming.
Overcoming the Challenges of a Biopic
Holland, whose last film was one of her best, seems to know that conventional biopics are naturally kitschy and the risk of being boring and informal if they drive chronologically through the life of the subject. In addition, she has to deal with the fact that Kafka’s life on the surface had not occurred particularly. He grew up in a wealthy German-Jewish family in Prague; had a rocky relationship with his arrogant father Hermann, but a better one with his mother and sisters; worked in the legal department for an insurance company; was engaged, but broke off and never married; captured tuberculosis and died at the age of 40.
Kafka’s Inner Life
His letter, which he had devoted to, was the most interesting thing about him, a very rich and born life of the mind. Only his almost contemporary, the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (who survived up to old age), who strangely also a lawyer for an insurance company, rivals Kafka, was in relation to the inverse proportion of literary originality and canonical importance for the matte of the life story. The film tries to offer a rounded portrait of Franz, which transfers its intellect, his sense of humor, and its complex emotional inner life.
The Film’s Structure and Score
The film feels tight, but nimble, with Tomasz Naumiuk’s cinematography often in motion or static when the characters flow frenetically from space to space within the frame, especially in the Kafka family house. We appreciate it why Franz would long for silence in order to be able to pursue his craft. Nevertheless, the original score of Mary Komasa and Antoni Komasa Lazarkiewicz, supplemented by Sadcore-Indie-Trupa Trupa, is a presence that behaves like a Sonic glue that holds the chronologically different sequences of the film together and at the same time adds the sound a clear modernity.
The Reproduction of Kafka
It will be the intensive, playful, sweet reproduction of Kafka by newcomer Idan Weiss, for whom people remember this film – a portrait of a complicated man who mainly lived in his head, but was able with friends and lovers. Also, the film does not minimize the centrality of Kafka’s Jewish identity and Zionist beliefs, but it is also not in any way for a specific audience. The fact that almost none of his family survived the Holocaust is not neglected. But the film does not wear in this part of the story, which develops long after Franz’ death.
Conclusion
The tense near-final scene, in which Brod only escapes a Gestapo officer on a train, whereby all Kafka’s papers in his pocket really need to know about the rise of fascism that Kafka predominates in a way. Similar to his writings, the film is interested in a distilled, abstracted meditation about power, law, control, and desire that exceeds the banal limits of realism.
