Kafka
by Steven Soderbergh
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VHS Tape Cover Information
Actor: Ian Holm, Jeremy Irons, Jeroen Krabb?, Joel Grey, Theresa RussellDirector: Steven Soderbergh
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
Running Time: 100 minutes
Release Date: 2001-04-03
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Publisher: Paramount
Studio: Paramount
VHS Movie Reviews of Kafka
Movie Review: All right, take a fictional note of this...
Summary: 4 Stars
"KAFKA" is one of those movies that was both negelected by the audience and the critics, and very unjustifiably so. What's exactly wrong with this picture? Is it because a lot of Very Heavy-Thinking Bookreaders claim that the real Franz Kafka is untouchable, and so: not-filmable, and there for, when this is done anyway, it must be condemned even before one single frame is actually seen?
But this is not about Mr. Real Kafka, it's about Mr. Fictitious Kafka, even one without Franz as a first name. This Mr. Fictitious Kafka writes about men transforming into giant insects, yes, and who works as a clerk in a insurance agency, yes, and who, at nightfall, sees a giant castle hoovering above the town in the distance, yes - but for all this, director Steven Soderbergh and screenplay writer Lemm Dobbs should be praised, (yes, even before a single frame has been seen.)
It's like a moviewriter's wet dream: to put The Real Kafka in his own nightmares, to make him a a pawn in his own fiction, and just see, with every page he slamms down on the typer, which way the story goes. Because The Real Kafka was the master of `dream logic', it's the movie writer's associative mind that can make the story about the Fictional Kafka flow in any direction it wants, taking strange turns here and there.
(Not that there shouldn't be a kind of narrative, a plot, but this plot may be based on tiny little super nova-explosions in the Imagination of the movie writer. And mind you, in straight Hollywood terms Imagination, The Great Imagination, is something rather underrated, or even: unappreciated. Because Great Imagination leads to Not-Understandable movies like "Brazil" or the stuff that David Lynch is born out of. And that scares away any decently raised movieproducer - auch! Talk about reals nightmares!!)
And every plot twist cooked up by This Great Imagination may be carried by strange creaures: zombie-like people with fixed grins on their faces, by two twin brotherish desk clerks who play a kind of dead pan slapstick between each others, by hysterical laughing stalkers with surgical incisions on their heads, and by irritating all-knowing police detectives who happen to look very much like Armin-Mueller Stahl.
And by Fictitious Kafka, of course, who maybe impersonates The Real Kafka when nobody is looking, but who rather stays anonymously hidden in the dark, in the back alleys of pittoresque Fictional Prague, or in his crammed little attic, writing his tiny little, barely read stories about people turning into giant insects and menacing castles.
Or about actor Jeremy Irons who dreams he shares the nightmares of a Real Fictitious Writer...
Summary of Kafka
The sophomore effort by Steven Soderbergh (sex, lies, and videotape) is an audacious and stylistically impressive experiment in a completely different direction from his debut. Working from a script by Lem Dobbs, Soderbergh follows the miserable day-to-day existence of Franz Kafka (Jeremy Irons), an insurance clerk in a large, impersonal company. Hiding out in his garret at night, he writes material he assumes no one will ever read. But then he happens upon clues that make him believe there is some plot afoot to suppress thought and he follows the trail into a hidden sanctuary, at which point the film abruptly shifts from shadowy black and white to jarring color. It doesn't all work, but it is never less than intriguing, with a cast that includes Alec Guinness, Ian Holm, and Joel Grey. --Marshall FineArt House & International VHS Video
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