Now, in our
family it is often me who calls up Mom and gives her a list of things to watch.
I am the big “movie watcher” in the family and Mom, it has to be said (sorry
Mom) is a creature of habit when it comes to the kinds of films she watches. I
mean don’t get me wrong, once I manage to chide her out of her comfort zone
she’s often glad I did it, but it does take work. Usually. This is why when she
actually sat down and watched a film by Sodebergh completely on her own
volition, I was surprised. I was even more surprised when she loved it and
insisted I watched it too. I had put the film duly on my list, but when it
transpired she had gone as far was watching it twice in the same week, I knew I
had to pull it up to the top of the list.
Franz Kafka
(Jeremy Irons) is a clerk in an insurance office in the city. The city is much
like all others, except that it’s administrative hub is The Castle. The
officials from The Castle make sure order is constant and everyone knows their
place. And Kafka’s place is a particularly
non-descript one, deep in a world where it pays not to stick out too much. And
Kafka fulfils his duty of keeping to himself a little too well. He writes in
his spare time and has a problematic relationship with a lady friend /fiancée
of yore but apart from that there are very few people in his life. This is why
it spikes more of his attention than average when Eduard, a colleague and one
of his few friends, goes missing. The official channels hand out the usual
explanations and soon his fears are realised and Kafka is called to identify
the body of his friend on the mortician’s slab. Kafka is deeply saddened by
this. But he also has something most of his colleagues don’t seem to possess:
an inquiring mind. And the more he uses it, the more he begins to realise
something doesn’t quite scan. The deeper he digs the fancier the conspiracy
theories seem to become and at first Kafka will have nothing to do with them
but then… Kafka runs out of explanations until he is only left with the
unthinkable. And the only way to confirm his suspicions is to somehow break in
to The Castle and find out…
There are
several ways you can take this film. On the surface, you can assume it’s a
simple thriller. And in that sense, it does its job beyond admirably. You will
be gripping the arms of your seats and there is at least one jump-scare in
there that will have you bodily leaping out of said seats. Jeremy Irons is
perfect, so are his rather admirable co-actors Joel Grey and Alec Guinness. But
one can’t help but stop and wonder whether that is really all the film is
about.
Now, as the
film is actually set in Prague you might actually think that “the officials”
who conspire against the people and make the subversives “disappear” is an
allusion to the Soviet occupation of the city – and I must say I thought of
that myself for a while but then I realised… Well hang on, Kafka died in 1924.
That’s even before the Nazis, much less the Soviets. It’s a mighty strange
choice of protagonist if that’s the true aim of the film, one would have
thought they would have put a bit more of an emphasis on Kafka, a turn of the
century man, trying to adapt to Soviet ways… At this point, I took a leaf out
of Kafka’s book and dug a little deeper. Like Kafka, my digging was rewarded
with an uncomfortable truth.
The
anonymity of the city, of the officials, of Kafka’s place of work is not really
simply artistic licence. He is not “interpreting” some period or another. It
is, in fact, the life we live. The world we live in. Kafka is, in fact, a beautiful
and painful testament of an individual trying to come to terms with the fact
that we live in a world that pushes us away from our individuality and towards
conformism. Oh come on, I’m not romanticising, you know it’s true. I know you
know. In the film, Kafka is not young, he has been in his position for a number
of years now. But you know the feeling you got when you started your first full
time job? You know, that grey, numb, nameless feeling when you looked down at
the rush hour crowd around you as you came down the escalator when you were
commuting to or from work? That sinking feeling you got when you thought “what
a beautiful day” but then realised you were going to be at work all day? That
heart ache when you realised your paint brushes / musical instrument / books/
whatever the particular tools of your artistic dream used to be are now under
several inches of dust because work doesn’t leave you the time or the energy?
What about when you realised you had the same phone /hair cut /clothes
(possibly more than one of the above) as your colleagues? You laughed, but
didn't you feel a certain, soreness that is hard to name? That’s what this film
is about. It is not a “happy” film by any stretch of the imagination. But it
does such a good job of putting a feeling into motion and making a thriller out
of it that well… You MUST see it. Joel Grey’s perfect characterisation of the
petty official whose work has become his entire life is work watching on its
own. He obsesses over every detail and is draconian about the observation of
the most meaningless rules. I mean, EVERYONE knows at least someone like that…
You don’t? Oh that’s dangerous… I advise a long hard look in the mirror. It
might not be too late.
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