That was an excellent one.

Memorable, crazy movie

Excellent, a Must See

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It's 1919 Prague. Kafka (Jeremy Irons) is an insignificant insurance worker under the thumb of his arrogant manager Burgel (Joel Grey). His co-worker friend Edward Raban is murdered for a picture of Doctor Murnau (Ian Holm). Inspector Grubach investigates. Kafka gets Raban's promotion. Co-worker Gabriela (Theresa Russell) brings him into an underground group battling a secret controlling organization.It's Steven Soderbergh's next film after his breakout indie 'Sex, Lies, and Videotape'. It certainly shows a maturity of filmmaking. The black and white cinematography looks terrific. It doesn't hurt to have the great Jeremy Irons. I also feel like the movie misses the mark slightly. I want Kafka to be in a web of unknowable bureaucracy with no way out and no reason for his predicament. The movie kind of gives a reason and that takes it down a notch.

Steven Soderbergh's cult "Kafka" is not a biopic of writer Franz Kafka, yet it has references of his works such as "The Castle", passages of his life (where he tells to a friends to burn his manuscripts away without showing his writings to the public) and a main character who happens to be a writer named Kafka. The extremely shy Kafka (Jeremy Irons) works in a bureaucratic place where he also writes to himself a few stories and some letters to his father. In this same place he only has one friend, a guy named Edward Raban who disappeared mysteriously. Kafka starts a strange journey trying to figure out what happened to his friend entering in a dangerous game with some strange figures such as Edward's lover and Kafka's co-worker (Theresa Russell) and her revolutionary friends; a very friendly figure who knows too much (Jeroen Krabbé); Grubach a police inspector (Armin Mueller-Stahl); and some of his own work colleagues such as his new assistants (Keith Allen and Simon McBurney), his estranged boss (Alec Guinness) and the annoying Mr. Burgel (Joel Grey); and at last Dr. Murnau (Ian Holm).In a magnificent performance Jeremy Irons makes of his Kafka a man suffocated by the environment where he lives and the only way to escape of it it's to write stories that reflect his life in an awkward way and/or his life as an "investigator" that took him to darker places that could have been a source of inspiration for his works. The movie goes to tell us that he lived in a bizarre and very surrealistic place with surrealistic figures all around him and they were always trying to watch his next step, what he was doing and Kafka run away from this people, hides his writing works. This is a good thriller material!Soderbergh makes of "Kafka" a good humored film noir that has a great mystery to be solved, the rhythm of the film is intertwined with some slow paced moments where you can pause your brain to solve some of the puzzles, a frantic suspense that goes to complete a surrealistic plot. The final result is a great movie with nothing obvious and it makes good homages to Kafka's work, and homages to another classic films. It is an interesting cross between "The Third Man" and "Brazil", the visual of those two films combined along with the almost colorless Kafka's books are put together in here. Walt Lloyd's cinematography is one of the most interesting and effective work ever made in film history, a photography that goes from black and white to color in a great way, showing these two worlds that seem to distant so each other when in fact they're close enough. In this case you can sense that the colorful world presented in the castle isn't better than the oppressive grey world outside of its dominions, the colors are presented only to tell us a frightening reality that is so shocking that we really want to go back to the black and white world along with Kafka. And as a great mind said one time: "The black and white doesn't lie". Unnoticed in its time "Kafka" is a cult film that must be revered by everyone and must of all revered by Kafka's fans even though this is not a biographical movie, it's more like a film that reveals more of his persona and an invitation to visually penetrate to his own creations. Or don't you think that we don't live in a Kafkanian nightmare in a Kafkanian world? 10/10

This is a strange creature: for a start, the first half is in black and white, then from a certain point the whole thing continues in colour. But more importantly, the real-life character of the writer, Kafka, has been bound up in an adventure story that he could have penned himself! The effect is of a whimsical, noire cartoon through which our hero stumbles, lost, for most of the time. But it is his bemused, everyday-ness which is his best defence against the hidden powers which are organised against him. In a way, it is disappointing when Kafka's paranoia is proved to be justified... the warped journey to this point is more fun than the pay-off. But this is a brave and playful film, at once terrifying and hilarious. The scene where the hero clumsily fights with an evil minion across the surface of huge magnifying glass, beneath which is a twitching, bloody brain undergoing maniacal experiments, is particularly bizarre, horrible and funny at the same time. 8/10

Early Steven Soderbergh film is full of grand ideas and thoughtful reflection combined with fear and doubt of the world at large. A nice mix when attempting to portray a writer. This film owes elements to NOSFERATU(1922) and even makes frequent references to Murnau and Orlac, DRACULA(1931), FRANKENSTEIN(1931), BRAZIL & NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR(1984). However, it's not quite in the same league as those. The film is a bit too predictable. Excellent performance by Jeremy irons in the lead.