{"id":2291,"date":"2007-08-25T02:42:42","date_gmt":"2007-08-25T02:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=2291"},"modified":"2022-08-10T15:35:37","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T14:35:37","slug":"steven-soderberghs-kafka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2007\/08\/25\/steven-soderberghs-kafka\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Soderbergh’s Kafka"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kafka_poster.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Do you detect a theme this week? The recent Pragueness had me watching this favourite film again. I unfairly dismissed Soderbergh after his debut, Sex, Lies and Videotape<\/em><\/a> (1989), which I found to be two hours of yuppie tedium despite its winning the Palme D’Or at Cannes. The prize did enable him to make Kafka<\/em><\/a> (1991), however, so I shouldn’t complain although I didn’t get to see this until it turned up on TV years after its release. The film was a major flop and put Soderbergh in the wilderness until Out of Sight<\/em><\/a> (1998), his first outing with George Clooney.<\/p>\n

Kafka<\/em> is one of a small group of works wherein well-known writers become embroiled in stories which parallel their fiction. Joe Gores’ Hammett<\/em> (filmed by Wim Wenders<\/a> in 1982) did this with Dashiell Hammett while Mark Frost in his novel, The List of Seven<\/em>, had a pre-Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle becoming involved in a Holmesian mystery. The screenplay for Kafka<\/em> by Lem Dobbs has the author falling in with anarchist revolutionaries in order to solve the death of a co-worker and a bureaucratic conspiracy. This was obviously too clever for a general audience, being littered with references to Kafka’s life and work and also to German Expressionist cinema with names like \u201cOrlac\u201d and \u201cMurnau\u201d comprising key plot elements. Dobbs wrote a couple of other noteworthy screenplays after this, Dark City<\/em><\/a>, a noirish fantasy that does what The Matrix<\/em> did only with greater imagination, and The Limey<\/em><\/a> (1999), another Soderbergh film with a great performance by Terence Stamp as a vengeful Cockney gangster on the loose in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\"kafka.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Alan Bennett had already written something similar to Kafka<\/em> in his 1986 TV film for the BBC, The Insurance Man<\/em><\/a>, which concerns a dye worker becoming enmeshed in the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute where Kafka worked as a clerk. Daniel Day-Lewis made a marvellous Franz Kafka in Bennett’s play, and was much more suited to the role than Jeremy Irons is in Soderbergh’s film. This is a shame since everything else about Kafka<\/em> is excellent, from Walt Lloyd’s moody photography, and the fabulous cymbalom-inflected score by Cliff Martinez, to the cast which includes the wonderful Theresa Russell, Joel Grey, Ian Holm and, in one of his last performances, Alec Guinness.<\/p>\n

Kafka<\/em> is also the Prague film par excellence<\/em>, making great use of the city’s Old Town and landmarks such as the Charles Bridge and Prague Castle, a building which dominates the story as well as many of the outdoor scenes. In fact I find myself watching it as much for the settings than anything else. Soderbergh enjoys cinematic pastiche and Kafka<\/em> owes a great deal to The Third Man<\/em><\/a> (which did for post-war Vienna what Kafka<\/em> does for Prague) and\u2014inevitably\u2014Orson Welles’ Kafka adaptation, The Trial<\/em><\/a>. Theresa Russell brings Vienna with her via Nicolas Roeg’s Bad Timing<\/em><\/a>, Joel Grey was in Cabaret<\/em><\/a>, of course, and Alec Guinness isn’t so far removed from his role as retired spy George Smiley in the BBC’s John le Carr\u00e9 films. And halfway through the film there’s a great surprise which I won’t spoil here.<\/p>\n

Kafka<\/em> is available on DVD finally<\/a>, although if you’re in the US you’ll have to import it. Soderbergh has talked about reworking the film in a longer version which I’d like to see if he ever gets round to it. Not an easy film to find but it’s worthy of your attention.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Kafka and Kupka<\/a>
\n\u2022 Alexander Hammid<\/a>
\n\u2022 How to disappear completely<\/a>
\n\u2022 Karel Plicka’s views of Prague<\/a>
\n\u2022 Giant mantis invades Prague<\/a>
\n\u2022 Nosferatu<\/a>
\n\u2022 Barta’s Golem<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you detect a theme this week? The recent Pragueness had me watching this favourite film again. I unfairly dismissed Soderbergh after his debut, Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), which I found to be two hours of yuppie tedium despite its winning the Palme D’Or at Cannes. The prize did enable him to make Kafka … Continue reading “Steven Soderbergh’s Kafka”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,42,51,7],"tags":[1012,1817,1125,1497,1013,2877,2883,2752,306,762,146,974,2882,4846,12391,4020],"class_list":["post-2291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-books","category-cities","category-film","tag-alan-bennett","tag-arthur-conan-doyle","tag-daniel-day-lewis","tag-dashiell-hammett","tag-franz-kafka","tag-ian-holm","tag-jeremy-irons","tag-john-le-carre","tag-nicolas-roeg","tag-orson-welles","tag-prague","tag-sherlock-holmes","tag-steven-soderbergh","tag-terence-stamp","tag-walt-lloyd","tag-wim-wenders"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-AX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}