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 3/10 Fair --- killthesnark.blogspot.com http://killthesnark.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
Monday, March 24, 2008 --- 135 days ago http://killthesnark.blogspot.com/2008/03/castle.html
| The Castle (Germany, 1997) * * * 1/2 D: Michael Haneke To be a devotee of Franz Kafka is an almost sadomasochistic act of frustration, since his two masterworks, The Trial and The Castle, are books which are incomplete--missing many chapters, in the case of the former, and missing an ending, in the case of the latter. But then, this is my life, and I'm a frustrated individual. In high school I first discovered his writings--gravitating more toward The Trial and his short story "In the Penal Colony" than his more famous "The Metamorphosis," and obsessing over Orson Welles' 1962 adaptation of The Trial, which, with its horrendous sound quality and contrasty, beaten-up public domain prints, always looked like some mysterious relic from another dimension, and thus mesmerized me. (It was also, along with Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai and High and Low, my introduction to "art films.") I haven't read The Castle in eight or nine years, but upon watching Michael Haneke's 1997 adaptation (populated by familiar faces from the same year's Funny Games), I can say this matches my recollection exactly. This must be one of the most scrupulous literary adaptations ever made; it is faithful to a fault. But if you're a Kafka fan like myself, that fault will also be its strength. The Trial at least had a sketchy ending to draw from, and Welles used the fragmentary nature of the book as a stylistic device, embracing the dream-logic and paranoiac i ... |
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