Guillermo del Toro is not the only famous international filmmaker able to make a passion project that has lasted decades this year. Where Del Toro had “Frankenstein,” Agnieska Holland had “Franz,” and the Polish director paid tribute to the literary hero she discovered as a teenager, bringing a biopic based on mold rather than portraits.
“Kafka has been a part of my life since I was 14. This is the first time I’ve read his short stories and it’s “The Trial,” remembering the “European” helmer, who describes the popular Czech writer as a man of many paradoxes. “He was very open, but at the same time I couldn’t access him. I had the impression that he understood him and somehow he seemed like a part of my family.
According to the Netherlands, Kafka was one of the reasons she went to Prague to study. “It was about following his path, being in town,” she says. At that time, the Czech capital still had traces of the Kafka era. Now, like the author’s shrine, Prague has official museums and several memorials around the town, ranging from iconic to kitsch, in her view. “He became a tourist attraction and one of the main sources of income for souvenir shops. And at one point I started to get a little mad at it.”
Ten years after graduating from Famu (the famous film school that launched the Czech New Wave legends Milos Forman and Zizi Menzel), in 1981, the Netherlands adapted Kafka’s “Trial” as a Polish television teleplay. “It was an extremely useful job for me intellectually,” she says. “I thought I touched on something essential about the ‘trial’ that I didn’t see in other adaptations. ”
The more Holland read about Kafka and helped him with his writings (including the abundant diaries and letters he left behind), the more she became convinced that he was misinterpreted by the world. “He’s not that grumpy and dark, he’s very sharp and has a lot of humor,” she explains. The Netherlands wanted to tell his story, but the opportunity appeared until she returned to Prague to make two films, Burning Bush and Charlatan.
“I was sure it wasn’t a traditional linear biopic,” she says. “He never finished his novel. For some reason, it’s impossible to think he’s finished a story about him or caught him. And we decided to reunite the fragments instead.” The script, co-written with Marek Epstein, incorporates Kafka’s family troubles, love life, and lesser-known works.
“I’m not a scholar. I didn’t want to teach people,” says Holland. “I had the impression that we were actually doing another film every day and were stylists that it somehow reflected. Of course, that was dangerous. When you do such conceptual work, you never know if it will come together as a story you want to follow.”
The film arrives a year after the author’s centenary celebration, allowing several other projects to take advantage of the anniversary of Kafka’s death at the age of 40 in 1924. Her previous film, “Green Border,” deals with the almost Kafka-esque crisis at the Polish Belarus Frontier.
“My profession is not just telling a timeless story about my profession as a filmmaker, but it’s also about responding to reality that I think is important in the moment when I think it’s still possible to change this reality slightly.
“We see the same process in other countries in Europe and the United States. How easy it is to invent or name a new scapegoat (how easy it is to launch a huge hatred that leads to legitimate violence,” so the Netherlands have given priority to “green borders.”
“It was a certain level of urgency. The clock was ticking, so it was impossible to push later. “And now I think it was too late. Of course, I didn’t stop anything.
For the Netherlands, who was severely criticised by Poland’s finest authorities (who compared her to Goebbels and Stalin), film is a medium of truth and reflection.
“I made a film about the Holocaust to not only respect the victims and remind them of historical facts, but to send some kind of warning about what humanity can do,” she says. “I think since my film “Europe, Europe,” the Holocaust vaccinations have been slow, but certainly, made people say “never again.” We can now accept the same thing that the Germans did in the mid-30s as the final solution. ”
Kafka passed away young, but many of his Jewish relatives became victims of the Holocaust. “I was sure he never survived it. He was not a survivor. He was not a fighter,” Holland said. “He was very strong in pursuing his profession to write, but at the same time, he was very vulnerable on many levels.”
The Netherlands lived in Los Angeles for nearly a decade, but it was a mission to direct episodes of “Wire” and “Trem” that turned to Baltimore and New Orleans (and that opportunity after making producer Nina Kostrov Noble a friend in “Heart in the Heart”).
“Working on these two series has enriched me so much. My knowledge of American life and tragic issues in America,” and I saw something my friend, a US professor and intellectual, missed. “When Donald Trump was first in the primary, I remember an argument with them. I was watching what he was saying, and I told them, ‘He’d win.’
“But I’m not a politician,” she quickly reveals. “My duty, or ‘duty,’ is to put the words on the heaviness of my purpose — to talk about things people don’t want to hear, and politicians have made them hostile to voices defending some values that were widely accepted a decade ago and are no longer like that now. ”
