Franz follows the life of Franz Kafka, both how he lived as a man and how his work has lived on as an influential force in the literary world. By cutting back and forth in time, we get a full glimpse of Kafka’s life and attempt to understand an eccentric man whose writings (and the writings about his writings) have always been more prominent then the man.
What director Agneziska Holland does here is an interesting attempt to comment on the biopic genre itself. She presents a series of places that make money off Kafka’s name while having very little to do with Kafka himself (or even his work). These scenes comment on how people make money off the man that the art portrays. We often do not look at the life and how that might influence someone’s writing.
At some point, many scenes and some perspectives are not as interesting as others and, personally, the emotional investment that it inspired was never very high. It is a very bizarre and messy film at points. This does at times feel intentional to reflect Franz’s writing, which was very unique and controversial for his time. His stories are also reflected in the style of filmmaking. The camera moves weirdly, the angles take on unique perspectives and are always changing. All the acting is pretty good but no actor truly stands out from the ensemble. Franz gives each person in his life their own time to tell the audience directly how they perceived him. Through this, we get the idea that no one would truly understand Kafka except himself. The point of a biopic is often to understand its subject but here Holland knows that we may never know who he was. All we know for sure is how the man is talked about today and, unfortunately, half of that comes from people making money off his name.
Franz is playing at TIFF ’25. For more information, click here.
