The Good, The Bad and The Weird (2008) During the first third of this movie I already saw it as an instant classic. Everything about it clicked, the characters, the cinematography, the sound design (oh god the sounds in this movie!) and just the overall style. Loud, in your face and it didnt pull any punches. Then it started to drag on, and on, and on. Its constant action and it never really loses its edge, but it does get tedious after a while, and by the end of it I found it hard to care about what was happening. Could definitely have benefitted from being a bit more condensed (and lose maybe half the characters!). Still, a very good movie, though not as good as it couldve been. 4/5
The War of the Worlds (1953) This was a pretty huge disappointment for me. I dig a few elements of it, some of the effects for example still look excellent today (the lasers!) but a lot of it hasnt aged well, and Im not just talking about the clearly visible strings. Aside from the at-the-time acceptable man/woman relationships (at least try to help her a bit in the kitchen man!) it has a lot of illogical and sometimes stupid scenes (with the aliens in the house sequence as a prime example), and then its the painfully crappy go God! ending. Was the ending in the book as shitty as this? I felt it went against the statement about colonization and how it usually went down when two peoples with technological imbalances met each other, we were just lucky that God was on our side!
Im not sure which of the two version Id put on top
the Spielberg version I felt nailed the oppressive nature of the aliens better, but then again the original didnt have the moronic children, so I guess its a tie. 2/5
Ministry of Fear (1944) A decent mystery movie. Some really nice shots here and there but overall I wasnt that moved by or engaged with it. Id put it about on par with some of the lesser Hitchcock films and way below some of the better Fritz Lang films. 3/5
I also recently read The Castle by Franz Kafka and decided to hunt down some movie adaptations of it. I did the same back when I read The Trial and wasnt too impressed with what I found (the Orson Welles version and the one starring Kyle MacLachlan as K.). Whats interesting about these adaptations is that the works by Kafka are in parts unfinished, some of the mid- to late sections in The Trial are missing, and The Castle doesnt have an ending. Its fun to see how different directors try to tackle this and how they interpret the stories, which is a very hard thing to do since Kafkas novels are very personal affairs. And so my search for a decent Kafka adaptation continues!
The Castle (1997, Michael Haneke) With Haneke (Funny Games) attached I initially had hope that this one might be something special. What I got though was a word-by-word, scene-by-scene retelling of the Kafka story. Now I found some quote by Haneke where he said something like a TV movie [which this is] should be a straight retelling and nothing else! and thats exactly what he made. If you havent read the book, I guess this could get you interested, if you have read it, youll find it boring. Without K.s (the protagonist) inner monologues a lot of the intricacies of the story is lost, and in addition to that, a lot of Ks rebuttals that are in the book are not in the film. A huge part in Kafkas writing is that everything can be interpreted in at least three different ways (literal, religious and in relation to Kafkas personal life), and in the novels this is reinforced by the fact that K. usually holds a different view from the other characters, almost all of which are missing in the film. This makes it not just a boring, literal adaptation, but a lesser one at that.
The casting isnt all bad, Ulrich Mühe (The Lives of Others) does a good job portraying a tired and depressed man as K., even though he doesnt do much but sulk. The rest of the cast is decent as well with the exception of K.s helpers, which in the book acts as a sort of Marx Brothers comic relief, theyre the helpers that only make things worse, and I didnt feel that aspect of it got played up enough here.
All in all, there isnt much to see here. It does a poor job of translating the book so it cant serve as a substitute, and you wont find anything here thats not in the book. Its also over two hours long with really slow and mellow camerawork (usually just a still shot of people talking) which doesnt do it any favors. This one also doesnt give you an ending, just the Kafka stopped writing here, guess Ill stop filming! white text on black background.
The Castle (1968, Rudolf Noelte) This one was a bit harder to track down, its from a seemingly unknown director (hes done a lot of German TV films) featuring Maximilian Schell as K. I really think that this movie is the better of the two. It takes a lot more liberties with the plot; scenes are shortened, merged, deleted or even invented (!) and I felt that it makes the movie move at a much better pace than Hanekes version. Its still missing the voice over, and here K. doesnt get much to say either, but its not as tedious to watch. The camera rarely stands still which helps make it more engaging, and in addition to that its ¾ as long as the 1997 film while still hitting most of the major points in the story. It even adds its own ending -- one that is kinda similar to the one in The Trial, which probably isnt a bad guess considering how similar the two books are in general -- its not a very good or fulfilling one, but its an ending all the same. Oh and the helpers in this one did a much better job, they not only look the part (weak and scrawny) but they have a lot of screen time as well. Now, the comedy bits in the book is probably one of the easier aspects to adapt while still retaining the same punch, but here theyre altered in pretty big ways, which is nice.
As I said, the one from 1968 was to me the better movie, as it actually tries to be a movie. But at the same time it doesnt stray too far from the book, and is largely a literal adaptation. It still cannot capture the essence of the book and doesnt manage to be that profound of a movie. Though as far as Kafka adaptations go, Id put it second to the Welles adaptation of The Trial (which is much more creative both story-wise and visually, and it had Anthony Perkins which is perfect for K.), and I still wouldnt say that any of them come close to being a satisfying movie in and of its own or as a great adaptation. There is a Russian take on The Castle that I haven't seen called Zamok (1994), I'd love to see it, but it's pretty much impossible to find anywhere, so no luck there.
What Id really like to see is someone just taking the concept going wild with it. Kafkas writing is loaded with humor yet all everyone does is rip the dialogue and make a stale movie out of it. The places in the books arent real at all and could actually just exist in the protagonists (K., in both cases) head, which makes me yearn for a Dr. Caligari-style adaptation as well. Now with all that said, the one person I think fits the bill for a really great Kafka-based movie is Terry Gilliam, Brazil is probably the closest thing Ive seen to a Kafka-style story and Id love to see his take on it. Oh well, a man can dream.
