With 'Franz,' Agnieszka Holland Shares Her Unique View of Kafka, Informed by a Career of Outsider Insights
Guillermo del Toro isn't the only celebrated international filmmaker who managed to realize a decades-long passion project this year. Where Del Toro had "Frankenstein," Agnieszka Holland has "Franz," in which the Polish director pays homage to the literary hero she discovered as a teen, resulting in an unconventional biopic that's more puzzle than portrait. "Kafka has been a part of my life since I was 14, which was the first time I read his short stories, and then 'The Trial,'" remembers the "Europa Europa" helmer, who describes the popular Czech writer as a man of many paradoxes. "He was very open, but at the same time inaccessible. I had the impression that I understood him, that he was like a part of my family somehow. I even had the fantasy that I was taking care of him." 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In 1981, a decade after graduating from FAMU (the famous film school that launched Czech New Wave legends Miloš Forman and Jiří Menzel), Holland adapted Kafka's "The Trial" as a teleplay for Polish TV. "That was very instructive work for me intellectually," she says. "I thought that I touched something essential about 'The Trial,' which I didn't find in other adaptations." The more Holland read about Kafka and pored over his writing (including the copious diaries and letters he left behind), the more she became convinced he was being wrongly interpreted by the world. "I realized that he is not so moody and dark, that he's very sharp, and there's a lot of humor," she explains. Holland had wanted to tell his story, but it was not until she returned to Prague to make two movies, "Burning Bush" and "Charlatan," that the opportunity presented itself. "I was sure that it could not be a traditional linear biopic," she says. "He never finished any of his novels, and somehow, it is not possible to finish the story about him or to think we captured him. And so, we decided that we would reunite the pieces, the fragments" instead. The script, co-written with Marek Epstein, incorporates Kafka's family troubles, love life and lesser-known work, as well as revealing interactions (like a telling, idealistic exchange with a street beggar), all constructed around the critical two-day reception when Kafka the man became Kafka the brand. "I'm not a scholar. I didn't want to teach people," Holland says. "We had the impression that we were doing a different movie practically every day, and stylistically, that reflects somehow. Of course, it was risky. When doing that kind of conceptual work, you never know if it will come together as a story you want to follow." The movie arrives a year after the centennial celebration of the author, allowing several other projects to capitalize on the anniversary of Kafka's death, in 1924, at age 40. But Holland, who is among the world's most politically engaged filmmakers, had no choice. Her previous film, "Green Border," deals with the almost Kafka-esque crisis at the Poland-Belarus frontier, where neither side takes responsibility for the refugees crossing there. "I see my vocation as a filmmaker is not only to tell the stories which are timeless; it's also to react on the reality which I find important in the moment, when I think that maybe it's still possible to slightly change this reality," says Holland, who describes the migration issue as "a huge challenge for the wealthy world and for the entire planet, somehow," but was alarmed by what was happening in her home country. "You see the same process in other countries of Europe and the United States as well … how easy it is to invent or name the new scapegoat [in order to] start the massive hate, which will lead to legalized violence." So Holland prioritized "Green Border." "That was a work of some urgency, which was impossible to push for later because the clock was ticking, and so we put 'Kafka' aside for one year," she says. "And now I think it was too late. I didn't stop anything, of course. I just gave to some people a reason to think and feel." To Holland, who was harshly criticized by Poland's highest authorities (the minister of justice compared her to Goebbels and Stalin) for making that film, cinema is a medium for truth-telling and reflection. "I made those movies about the Holocaust, not only to honor the victims or to remind the historical facts, but also to send some kind of warning of what humanity is capable to do," she says. "Since my movie 'Europa, Europa,' I think that the vaccination of the Holocaust is evaporating, slowly but surely, what made people say 'never again.' We are susceptible now to accept the same things that the Germans did in the mid-'30s as a final solution." Kafka died young, though so many of his Jewish relatives became victims of the Holocaust. "I was pretty sure he never would have survived that. He wasn't a survivor. He wasn't a fighter," Holland says. "He was very strong in pursuing his vocation to write, but at the same time, he was very fragile on many levels." Holland spent nearly a decade living in Los Angeles, but it was the assignment of directing episodes of "The Wire" and "Treme" that opened her eyes to the reality of Baltimore and New Orleans (she got that opportunity after making friends with producer Nina Kostroff Noble on "Shot in the Heart"). "Working on those two series enriched me very much — my knowledge of American life and the tragic problems America has," says Holland, who saw something that friends who were professors and intellectuals in the U.S. missed. "I remember the discussions with them when Donald Trump was first in the primaries, and I was watching what he was saying, and I told them, 'He will win.' "But I am not a politician," she is quick to clarify. "I think that my duty — or maybe 'duty' is to heavy a word, by like my aim — is to speak about the things that people don't want to hear, maybe, and the politicians made them hostile against the voices which are raising in defense of some values which had been widely accepted 10 years ago and now are not anymore." Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts? 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With 'Franz,' Agnieszka Holland Shares Her Unique View of Kafka, Informed by a Career of Outsider Insights Guillermo del Toro isn...
