Agnieszka Holland has by no means shied away from troublesome topics. The Polish filmmaker, a three-time Oscar nominee (Indignant Harvest, Europa Europa, In Darkness) and winner of Venice’s jury prize for Inexperienced Border, has constructed her profession on tales of outsiders confronting oppressive techniques.
Her newest, Franz, takes on one of many final outsiders: Czech author Franz Kafka. Removed from a standard biopic, the movie mirrors the disjointed nature of Kafka’s life and his cryptic prose. Holland constructs a fragmented, kaleidoscopic portrait that blends actual episodes with Kafka’s fiction and his unusual afterlife as each cultural prophet and industrial model.
For Holland, the undertaking is private. She first encountered Kafka as a young person and later tailored The Trial for Polish tv in 1981. A long time later, she nonetheless sees him as a “fragile youthful brother,” a author whose imaginative and prescient of dehumanization feels extra pressing now than ever. With Idan Weiss as Kafka and Peter Kurth as his father, Franz marks Holland’s most bold try but to reintroduce Kafka to a brand new era.
Franz had its world premiere as a particular presentation at TIFF and can display screen in competitors at San Sebastián. Movies Boutique is dealing with worldwide gross sales.
Holland talked to THR concerning the lasting enchantment of Kafka, casting him, and what’s subsequent.
What attracts you to Kafka’s writing, and why is he nonetheless related right now?
The existential dimension of Kafka’s writing has at all times been essential to me, in addition to the questions he asks with out answering: What are the principles that govern our lives—authorized, political, philosophical, non secular? His work is cryptic, which implies each era can learn him in another way. That’s the reason he has remained so related. In truth, I feel he’s extra related right now than he was 20 or 30 years in the past, as a result of we’re as soon as once more going through the sort of dehumanization he foresaw within the Nineteen Thirties and 40s.
Kafka has additionally been deeply private for me. Finding out in Prague, I traced his footsteps. In 1981, I tailored The Trial for Polish tv, which was some of the thrilling mental duties of my profession. I’ve at all times felt a private connection—as if he have been a fragile youthful brother I needed to shield. With Franz, I needed to discover a cinematic language that may seize that feeling and current him in a means that speaks to a brand new era, lots of whom expertise the identical alienation he did.
Once you went again to Kafka for this movie, did he imply one thing completely different to you than if you first learn him?
I attempted to reconnect with the emotions I had once I first found him as a young person, earlier than his picture was buried underneath layers of interpretations, scholarship, and vacationer kitsch. Kafka grew to become a model, even a vacationer attraction, and his actual humanity was hidden. I needed to revive my authentic sense of him—with out pretending I may seize the total fact. Kafka at all times escapes interpretation. Everytime you assume you’ve nailed him down, he slips away. That thriller was essential to protect within the movie.
Did that additionally impression your stylistic strategy?
Sure. I knew I couldn’t make a standard biopic. Kafka’s life and work are fragmented, so the movie needed to be fragmented too—piecing collectively shards of his fiction, his letters, and his lived expertise. That strategy allowed me to rediscover the freshness of my early connection to him.
Agnieszka Holland
Why does Kafka resonate so strongly with younger individuals right now?
As a result of he expresses what many now really feel: a way of being completely different, of struggling to speak immediately, of being alienated by techniques—household, work, society—which can be without delay strict and incomprehensible. Kafka’s seek for freedom from these forces, and his neuroatypical sensibility, communicate to the experiences of right now’s youth.
How did you forged Idan Weiss as Kafka?
He was virtually unknown, a younger German stage actor, however Simone Bär, our sensible casting director, noticed him instantly. From the start, it was clear he was Franz. Not solely bodily or as a result of he’s Jewish, however due to his sensibility—his strangeness, his humor, his apartness. He actually appeared to hold Kafka’s soul. At instances, it was troublesome as a result of he thought in methods completely different from the movie crew, however I got here to see that as important. With out him, the movie wouldn’t really feel true.
What would Kafka make of being a vacationer attraction and international model?
He can be terrified. He had no narcissistic want for fame. He needed his writing to be acknowledged, however in thriller. On the identical time, he had an ideal humorousness, so he would possibly discover a few of it absurdly humorous. Nonetheless, I feel the commodification of his identify and picture would have horrified him.
Kafka’s humor is usually ignored. Was it one thing you acknowledged from the start?
Sure. I knew it from the beginning. His humor is darkish, painful, however very current. It was essential to incorporate that within the movie.
Why did you select to stage his brief story Within the Penal Colony somewhat than, say, The Metamorphosis or The Fortress?
It was each the simplest of his tales to visualise and, for me, essentially the most prophetic. It exposes the absurdity of institutionalized cruelty. Readers after the Second World Battle acknowledged how Kafka had foreseen the chilly, legalized violence that outlined the twentieth century. Sadly, I feel we live by way of a return to that logic now, and I needed these pictures within the movie as a result of they mirror what we more and more see within the information.
What would Kafka say concerning the state of the world right now?
It’s ironic that he died earlier than Hitler, since he anticipated the horrors that have been coming. His household lived by way of what he foresaw, however he escaped it. I feel if he confronted right now’s cynical violence—wars, political brutality, dehumanization—he wouldn’t combat. Kafka wasn’t a survivor at any price. Even along with his sickness, he appeared to give up somewhat than battle. Confronted with our world right now, I feel he would merely disappear.
Did making this movie change your perspective on Kafka?
It deepened my connection. The method revived my authentic emotions for him and gave me a brand new stylistic freedom. The movie confirmed for me that Kafka can’t be advised in a linear means. His fact exists solely in fragments, in items.
What’s subsequent for you?
Most likely a movie about Jerzy Kosiński, the Polish-American author who was an ideal superstar within the U.S. earlier than being disgraced and who dedicated suicide in 1992. His story is essentially forgotten now, but it surely feels related—about fact and fiction, fame and cancellation. In some methods, he was a sort of non secular grandson of Kafka, although with a really completely different, extra narcissistic character.
