Guillermo Del Toro is not the only international filmmaker famous to have succeeded in carrying out a passionate project for several decades this year. Where Del Toro had “Frankenstein”, Agnieszka Holland “Franz”, in which the Polish director pays tribute to the literary hero she discovered in adolescence, resulting in an unconventional biopic which is more puzzle than the portrait.
“Kafka has been part of my life since I was 14, which was the first time I have read its news, then” The Trial “”, recalls the Helmer “Europa Europa”, which describes the popular Czech writer as a man of many paradoxes. “It was very open, but at the same time inaccessible. I felt like I understood it, that it was part of my family in one way or another. I had the fantasy that I took care of him. ”
According to Holland, Kafka was one of the reasons why she went to Prague to study. “It was to follow his way, to be in the city,” she says. At the time, the Czech capital still had traces of the Kafka era; Now Prague is almost like a sanctuary to the author, with an official museum and several monuments in the city, which go from the emblematic to kitsch in his opinion. “It has become a tourist attraction and one of the main sources of income for souvenir stores. And at one point, I started to be a little angry with this. ”
In 1981, a decade after having graduated from Famu (the famous film school which launched the Czech legends of the new wave Miloš Forman and Jiří Menzel), Holland adapted Kafka’s “The Trial” as a teleplay for Polish television. “It was a very informative work for me intellectually,” she says. “I thought I had touched something essential in” The Trial “, which I did not find in other adaptations.”
The more the Dutch read on Kafka and rushed over his writings (including the diaries and the letters he left), the more she became convinced that he was wrongly interpreted by the world. “I realized that it was not so in a bad mood, that it is very clear and that there is a lot of humor,” she explains. Holland had wanted to tell her story, but it was only when she returned to Prague to make two films, “Burning Bush” and “Charlatan”, that the opportunity arose.
“I was sure it couldn’t be a traditional linear biopic,” she said. “He has never finished any of his novels, and in one way or another, it is not possible to finish the story about it or to think that we have captured it. And so, we decided that we bring together the pieces, the fragments “instead. The script, co-written with Marek Epstein, incorporates Kafka’s family problems, love life and less known work, as well as revolutionary interactions (like a revealing and idealistic exchange with a street beggar), all built around the two-day critical reception when Kafka, the man, became Kafka the brand.
“I am not a scholar. I didn’t want to teach people, ”says Holland. “We had the impression that we were making a different film almost every day, and stylistically, which somehow reflects. Of course, it was risky. When you do this kind of conceptual work, you never know if it will come together as a story you want to follow.”
The film arrived a year after the celebration of the author’s centenary, allowing several other projects to capitalize on the anniversary of Kafka’s death in 1924, at the age of 40. But Holland, which is among the most committed filmmakers in the world, had no choice. His previous film, “Green Border”, deals with the almost Kafka crisis at the Frontier of Poland-Belarus, where none of the parties takes responsibility for the refugees there.
“I see that my vocation as a filmmaker is not only to tell the stories that are timeless; It is also to react on the reality that I find important in the moment, when I think it may always be possible to slightly change this reality “, explains Holland, who describes the question of migration as” a huge challenge for the rich world and for the whole planet, but was alarmed by what was going on in his country of origin.
“You see the same process in other European countries and the United States too … how easy it is to invent or name the new scapegoat [in order to] Start massive hatred, which will cause legalized violence. Holland therefore prioritized the “green border”.
“It was a work of a certain urgency, which was impossible to push for later because the clock was co-hidden, and we therefore put aside” Kafka “for a year,” she said. “And now I think it was too late. I didn’t stop anything, of course. I have just given some people a reason to think and feel. ”
For Holland, which was harshly criticized by the highest authorities in Poland (the Minister of Justice compared it to Goebbels and Stalin) for making this film, cinema is a means of truth and reflection.
“I made these films on the holocaust, not only to honor the victims or to recall historical facts, but also to send a kind of warning from what humanity is capable of doing,” she said. “Since my film” Europa, Europa “, I think that the vaccination of the holocaust evaporates, slowly but surely, which made people say” never again “. We are now likely to accept the same things as the Germans have done in the mid -1930s as a final solution. »»
Kafka died young, although so many of her Jewish parents have become victims of the holocaust. “I was almost sure that he would never have survived that. He was not a survivor. He was not a fighter, “says Holland. “He was very strong in the continuation of his vocation to write, but at the same time, he was very fragile on several levels.”
Holland spent almost a decade living in Los Angeles, but it is the sale of making episodes of “The Wire” and “Treme” which opened her eyes to the reality of Baltimore and New Orleans (she had this opportunity after having made friends with producer Nina Kostroff Noble on “Shot in the Heart”).
“Working on these two series enriched me a lot – my knowledge of American life and the tragic problems of America,” said Holland, who saw something that friends who were teachers and intellectuals in the United States missed. “I remember the discussions with them when Donald Trump was the first in the primaries, and I looked at what he said, and I said to them:” He will win “.
“But I’m not a politician,” she quickly clarified. “I think that my duty – or maybe” duty “is to make a word, like my goal – is to talk about things that people do not want to hear, perhaps, and politicians have made them hostile against the voices that lift to defend certain values which had been widely accepted 10 years ago and which are no longer.”
