Review of Kafka Starring Jeremy Irons

Steven Soderbergh's Follow-Up to Sex, Lies and Videotape

Jun 14, 2009 Kevin Sturton

Playful biopic mixing fact with fiction as the writer Franz Kafka investigates the death of a colleague.

The film Kafka begins in Prague, 1919. Insurance clerk Kafka (Jeremy Irons) investigates the disappearance of his friend and colleague Eduard Rabin. Eduard was sent by his employers to The Castle, an appointment he kept, but never returned from. Gabrielle, Eduard’s lover and a member of an anarchist group draws Kafka into the mystery by trying to recruit him into her organisation.

Although Kafka rejects her offer his interest in Eduard’s disappearance is piqued. Kafka discovers others have gone missing after being sent to The Castle, including a noted surgeon, Dr Murnau (Ian Holm). Now there are strange creatures wandering the streets of Prague at night and Kafka is being followed by the enigmatic Inspector Grubach (Armin Mueller-Stahl).

Lem Dobbs Screenplay for Kafka

Although Lem Dobbs follows what James Hawes referred to as the ‘Kafka Myth’ in his book Excavating Kafka, presenting a solitary, withdrawn figure, rather than the sociable and charming figure Kafka apparently was, he combines elements of the author’s life with nightmares from his fiction. Kafka did work for an insurance company and wrote through the night. There are hints in the film of his troubled relationship with his father and his inability to commit to a relationship. There are allusions to his work most notably in the presence of The Castle, which in Kafka’s fiction is unknowable, and unreachable, but here reveals its secrets, although they are fairly banal compared to Kafka’s nightmares.

Kafka Trashed by US Critics

Steven Soderbergh won huge acclaim and the Palme ‘D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his debut movie Sex, Lies and Videotape. Following up such success with his second film was always going to be difficult and making a black and white semi-fictional biopic of Franz Kafka using techniques borrowed from German Expressionism is probably asking for a kicking. Kafka was initially released in the US in 1991, but it would be another three years before it briefly turned up in a handful of UK cinemas.

Kafka and the Misery Myth

Although Kafka is regarded as a miserabilist, his writing is often very funny. The masterful short story ‘The Rebuff’ is barely half a page long, but skewer’s the romantic longing of both sexes with a perfect aim. The preference for films about, or based on work by ‘serious’ writers, and few are taken as seriously as Kafka, is that they be serious. Witness the austere and lifeless version of The Trial (David Hugh Jones 1993) with the perfectly cast Kyle MacLachlan trapped in a lousy production, just as surely as Josef K is trapped by the law. Lem Dobbs script has plenty of humour and Soderbergh has essentially placed the great novelist in a highbrow zombie film, like The Third Man (Carol Reed 1949) crossed with George Romero. Maybe this seemed incongruous to some critics, but it is closer to the spirit of Kafka’s work than they realise.

Rating 4/5

• Kafka
• Starring Jeremy Irons
• Written by Lem Dobbs
• Directed by Steven Soderbergh
• 94 minutes

See also Franz Kafka Museum, Prague

The copyright of the article Review of Kafka Starring Jeremy Irons in Independent Films is owned by Kevin Sturton. Permission to republish Review of Kafka Starring Jeremy Irons in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Kafka

What do you think about this article?

---

NOTE: Because you are not a Suite101 member, your comment will be moderated before it is viewable.

post your comment

What is 4+9?