Franz was shot in Prague, including near Franz Kafka’s birthplace. (still from film)
Troubled father-son relationships, both literally and metaphorically, are themes of Franz and Orphan, the former a biopic with some quirks and the latter a more old-school period piece. The two movies are part of this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, which runs Oct. 2-12.
Director Agnieszka Holland’s Franz is an imaginative film that flits between the “present,” Franz Kafka’s adult years, until his death, at age 40, in 1924, and some formative childhood moments (mostly highlighting his domineering and dismissive father), while also jumping into the future, where tour guides at various institutions and parks tell modern-day tourists all about the influential writer.
In one of these future moments, we learn that the ratio of words written by Kafka and those written by others about him is approximately one to 10 million. Some of these millions of words were written by Kafka’s friend and literary executor, novelist Max Brod, who rescued much of Kafka’s work. Brod’s Franz Kafka: A Biography is apparently a primary source of what we know about Kafka’s life, and he is featured in Holland’s film.
While Idan Weiss, who plays the tortured writer (and insurance lawyer) has gotten kudos from other reviewers for his performance, Peter Kurth, who plays Hermann Kafka, Franz’s father, stands out even more. Kurth plays stubborn and unlikeable well, but also shows Hermann’s vulnerability and how he uses meanness to cover it up.
Franz Kafka was born in Prague, in 1883, and he is witness to world-changing events, including the First World War and the subsequent collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kafka was drafted, but his employers successfully argued that he was an indispensable worker – according to the movie, they did so at Hermann’s behest. The creation of Czechoslovakia and several other independent states after the war is not an explicit aspect of Franz, but the oppressiveness of the empire (the fatherland, in the metaphor) comes out in Kafka’s depictions of bureaucracy, alienation, anxiety, etc. While Franz doesn’t add any new knowledge to what’s known about Kafka, his upbringing (harsh on many levels), writing (most of it published after his death), love life (engaged for a period, then involved with a married woman), religion (not an observant or believing Jew) and illness (tuberculosis), but it might bring a new generation to his ideas, which remain important.
As Holland told Variety: “the dehumanization of society, the despisal of [certain groups of people] and alienation are once again becoming the main communicative tools,” but, not wanting to “give an interpretation like that,” she said, “Kafka has been interpreted in so many ways, as is shown in the film, but when you compare what he wrote with what was written about him they are poles apart. So, we didn’t want to reinterpret Kafka; we wanted to make him alive.”
And Franz is a success in those terms. It is entertaining and thought-provoking, though sometimes the thoughts are about odd creative choices. There is a lot of male nudity and it’s not always clear why. For example, in one scene at a sanitorium, naked men, some wearing animal head masks, engage in a game of tug-o-war.
László Nemes’s Orphan, which takes place in Hungary, is a more linear and literal form of storytelling, also focusing on a time of upheaval and oppression. While most of the film takes place in 1957 – a year after the Soviet Union crushed the people’s revolt against the country’s communist government – the young Jewish protagonist, Andor (played by a brooding Bojtorján Barábas), was put into an orphanage during the Second World War. We witness his mother and a reluctant Andor reunited after the Holocaust. Her “saviour” was a non-Jew, Berend (played by Grégory Gadebois with nuance), who Andor absolutely hates.
Andor cannot forgive his mother for giving up on the possibility of his father’s survival, even years after the war, and, when Berend claims that Andor is actually his biological son (and Andor’s mother never clarifies), Andor’s anger is barely containable and the tension mounts to a climatic Ferris wheel ride. While Berend is an abusive brute, he also seems to genuinely want Andor’s filial affection. Andor and Berend not only represent son and (possible) father, but Hungary’s desire for freedom from its Soviet oppression.
Orphan is slow-paced, capturing the heaviness of the period, the incapacitating fear and oppression of 1957 Hungary. Twelve-year-old Andor doesn’t go to school, roams the streets, amuses himself at home, seems bored silly at times, and has nowhere positive to channel his frustrations and his feelings of abandonment.
While Franz and Orphan are two very different movies, they cover overlapping themes that are sadly all too relevant. Franz screens Oct. 7 and 11, and Orphan plays Oct. 2 and 4.
For tickets to either film and the entire festival line-up, go to viff.org.