In order to do justice to a master like Franz Kafka, a masterpiece is required – and that is exactly what the biopic “Kafka” has become. The Swiss Joel Basman convinces in the leading role. Director David Schalko says of his series about the literary giant: “The best thing I’ve ever had the pleasure of filming.”
Each episode focuses on a different person from Kafka’s environment. As lovers, friends, parents and professional colleagues take on the role of narrator, it becomes clear: Kafka was not the lonely genius that he was posthumously mystified as.
Visits to brothels and heated discussions
Visits to brothels were commonplace in Kafka’s time. He occasionally sought out prostitutes with his friend and mentor Max Brod. They met at a lecture by Brod on Schopenhauer. Listener Kafka asked for a conversation, whereupon he and Brod walked around Prague all night arguing passionately.
Delay until fiasco
The second episode is named after Felice Bauer, who was engaged to Kafka for five years. The lovers’ lively correspondence is legendary – today available as a book with over 1000 pages. But Kafka’s hesitation is also legendary. He canceled the planned marriage several times until Felice gave him an ultimatum. Since Kafka hesitates again, Felice does tabula rasa. The two will never see each other again.
Tantrums and Judaism
Kafka’s father was a choleric tyrant. Episode 3 leaves no doubt about that. When his son Franz introduces him to a Jewish friend, he salivates: “You’re bringing vermin into my house!” The Kafkas themselves are Jews. The father also disapproves of his son’s literary work. To do this, he buys an asbestos factory from Franz against his wishes.
Night owl for hardship cases
Kafka mostly wrote at night because he worked for an insurance company during the day. And his work was appreciated. With his sharp mind, Kafka usually found the right arguments in difficult legal cases. When nothing worked anymore, the company often said: “Let Kafka solve the problem.”
Morphine and theft
When Kafka tells the journalist Milena Jesenska about a 100-page letter to his father that he never sent, she grins and recommends that he “steal and take morphine.” She stops laughing when Kafka reacts so compulsively to the sight of her naked breasts. She screams in his face, pissed off: “We all believe your poor weakling invention – and you’re not prepared to compromise in any way!”
Treasure in the Gestapo archives?
The final episode is named after Dora Diamant, with whom Kafka was in a relationship in the last months of his life before he died at the age of 40 after a long illness. Many of Kafka’s texts remained in Diamond’s possession, which Hitler’s Gestapo confiscated years later. And because the Gestapo never threw anything away, these last Kafka notebooks are probably in the Federal Archives in Berlin. It is very doubtful whether they will ever be found. The Gestapo’s disorganized files consist of a total of nine kilometers of paper.
More highlights
The main actor, Basman, speaks almost exclusively in sentences that come from Kafka’s work – and yet this never seems artificial and always fits organically into the dialogue.
Kafka’s literary contemporaries Rainer Maria Rilke and Robert Musil appear in supporting roles. While Lars Eidinger plays Rilke, Musil – in a suitably androgynous version – is played by Verena Altenberger.