|
|
| Sunday, March 30, 2008 02:16 PM |
| (Last updated on Monday, March 31, 2008 02:26 PM) | | On the Viewer - Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life and Other Strange Tales |
 by Fëanor |
I forget how or where, but I heard about Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life a while ago and was immediately fascinated. Combining Kafka's dark, surreal, Godless, paranoiac meditations with Capra's hopeful, moving, religious Americana could only result in insanity and hilarity. So when I saw that the film was available on Netflix as part of a collection of other short films, I popped it on the queue immediately. A while back we received it in the mail and finally watched it. Here are my impressions of each of the films.
Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life
First up is the titular film, which opens with Kafka sitting in his bare room in an apartment building on Christmas Eve trying to write the story that will become Metamorphosis. The problem is he's stuck on how to end the first line - what should Gregor Samsa find himself transformed into when he awakes? He considers various ridiculous possibilities, but none of them seem right, and his struggle with writer's block is made all the more difficult by an increasingly odd series of distractions involving a noisy all-girl party going on in the apartment beneath him; a creepy knife-sharpener roaming the hallways in search of his mysterious friend; and a woman who has come to the wrong address to make a delivery from a joke shop. When inspiration finally hits, Kafka reacts with an act of violence that seems destined to lead to his own destruction. Until he inevitably discovers that he really has a wonderful life after all.
It's a very clever, very funny little movie with Richard E. Grant doing a fine job in the main role, and Ken Stott doing equally well as the knifeman. The way it all winds up with a succession of people coming into the room with big jars of bugs is disturbing, hilarious, and touching all at the same - which pretty much describes the movie as a whole. The best fusion of Capra and Kafka you're likely to see!
Seven Gates
This is another film set during Christmas. It opens up with a man giving a monologue about great coffee; we discover he's actually driving along with a great big coffee maker in the middle of his great big car. He finds another man broken down by the side of the road and picks him up. It slowly becomes clear as they talk that they are brothers and are both headed home for Christmas dinner. It also becomes clear that they're both a bit odd, that one has always been successful and loved by his parents, and that the other has always been unsuccessful and has a much rockier relationship with the folks. The seven gates of the title refer to the seven gates the two men must pass through as they travel over the acres of family farm on their way to the house.
This is a well-acted film, with realistic dialogue, that is relatively entertaining and moving, despite the fact that I didn't feel like it went much of anywhere. But maybe that's kind of the point; the film isn't about any big revelations or transformations. You just get to know a couple of other humans for a little bit, and then it's over. And that's okay.
The Deal
This is a very strange little film. Like the previous film, it focuses in on a conversation between just two characters, but it's quite unlike that film in every other way. Joe Grifasi stars as a character named Boular who, as the film opens, enters a large, dramatically and expensively furnished room for a meeting with the owner of the place - a character named Veneer, played by Larry Pine. The two men are there to make the deal of the title, but what the deal is exactly about never becomes entirely clear. It seems to be a business deal, but one with incredibly far-reaching consequences. In fact, the two men seem to be planning to take over the world somehow. Veneer's building where they're meeting is apparently very, very high up in the sky, and Boular's headquarters is located deep underground, so poppy and I both thought that perhaps Veneer was meant to be an angel, or even God, and that Boular was meant to be a demon or the Devil himself. The surreally grand and over-the-top theme and style of their conversation seems to support this hypothesis. But Veneer is not the ultimate good to Boular's ultimate evil; they are instead both equally immoral and repulsive. They each speak casually of doing horrendous and offensive things. They are each obsessed with gaining power and money, acquiring and showing off their sexual potency (the sequence where they talk about how they've customized their balls is really breathtaking), consuming rare and horrendous delicacies, and, in short, indulging in pretty much any of the seven deadly sins you can think of. Their deal is ultimately consumated in a rather... unexpected fashion.
I was surprised at first to see Lewis Black's name in the credits as the screenwriter - apparently he adapted it from his own play; and yes, it is indeed the stand-up comedian Lewis Black - but then I thought about it for a minute and realized that yes, this is indeed just the kind of movie Lewis Black would write. It has the large vocabulary, the ridiculousness, the wrongness, and the social satire that Black is known for. I can't say I found it anywhere near as funny as most of his stand-up, however. But that seems to be deliberate; the film, despite being rather goofy, also has a seriousness to it, and a purpose and message in mind. What exactly the purpose and the message are, I can't say for sure, but I did find the film creative and moderately entertaining, if also a bit disturbing, stiff, and unsettling.
Mr. McAllister's Cigarette Holder
The last and easily the least of the shorts is this one, which is a period piece set in what appears to be the Depression-era American South. Mr. McAllister is a man who clears roads of garbage for a living, as part of a team of other men. One day while at his business he finds an odd little cigarette holder which quickly becomes his most prized possession, because he puts great value in things that are unique and one-of-a-kind. Later he meets an albino woman and they begin an odd romance. While they're on a trip together, he discovers that his prized cigarette holder is not as unique as he thought. But an act of sacrifice allows him to maintain his beliefs.
This story is pointless and irritating; we actually got tired of it after a while and just fast forwarded through the rest of it. I didn't like or sympathize with any of the characters, the dialogue is clumsy and stupid, and the film as a whole is paced poorly. Just a bad movie. But happily it's the only really bad film in the collection. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
