Franzis an anti-biopic: Idan Weiss on taking part in Kafka

“Why was Kafka not into music?” Given an viewers, that is the one query that actor Idan Weiss needs to ask the insurance coverage clerk from Prague who weaponised absurdity to reveal the soul-crushing equipment of recent existence.

The younger German actor’s strong efficiency in his first vital position is the spotlight of Agnieszka Holland’s Franz. The playfully subversive biopic had its India premiere on the ongoing thirty first Kolkata International Film Festival 2025. Franz is Poland’s official entry for the 98th Academy Awards, and the nice previous Nandan was crammed to the brim as cineastes turned up in massive numbers to rejoice the Twentieth-century writer whose works, coping with alienation and oppressive forms, deeply resonate with Indians.

The lanky actor has not simply acted however inhabited the character, making the delicate strangeness of Kafka completely tangible by means of these darting eyes that set up the outsider standing of the topic with a layered identification.

In a web-based dialog, the winner of this yr’s Best Actor award on the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia says he isn’t in any respect like Kafka. “He was not into music; I’m surrounded by music on a regular basis. He was an introvert, whereas I’m a whole extrovert. However, I may relate to his sensitivity. When taking part in a personality, one seems for the emotional core of the character. Like Kafka, I didn’t have the simplest of childhoods. In faculty, for 3 to 4 years, there was not a single day once I was not pushed towards the lockers and shouted at.” Idan says it was a tough time, however he’s grateful to these individuals who bullied him. “When you undergo a troublesome time, you begin appreciating life.” He says theatre and life experiences helped him improvise for the position. “There was a time once I watched a lot theatre that I couldn’t pay my hire.”

An iconoclast, Agneiszka has chosen the type of a non-linear, fourth-wall-shattering biopic to resurrect Kafka for the modern-day viewers that continuously seeks virality and triviality. A tour information within the movie says the ratio of phrases written by Kafka to these written about him is now one in ten million. Seeking to separate the model Kafka from Franz, Idan admits biopics are the flavour of the season. “There are quite a few biopics obtainable that share an identical type and presentation. Agneiszka had a picture, a imaginative and prescient of Kafka, and he or she needed to be completely different. So we created one thing that we are able to name an anti-biopic. It is like somebody standing behind the door and filming Kafka by means of the peephole. Together, we tried to seek for Kafka. After on daily basis of the shoot, we bought nearer to him. It was fairly a journey,” gushes Idan, relating how he was found by means of the audition course of.

Right from Angry Harvest (1985), Agnieszka’s movies are deeply political. Even in Franz, the political undertones are palpable. Kafka’s bureaucratic nightmares aren’t simply private; they’re prophetic warnings about totalitarianism. The discerning may sense the Shoah’s shadow with out Agnieszka referring to the Holocaust. The touch upon Kafka being turned right into a commodity works as a jab on the materialistic occasions we reside in, the place each reminiscence turns into a gram-worthy gimmick. Idan says the movie is just not overtly political, however in Agnieszka’s interpretation, “small moments make a better affect.”

In a earlier interview with this journalist, Agneiszka had stated that she was grateful that no person else’s eye fell on the gifted stage actor and was maybe ready to be found by her. Idan says it helped that he didn’t have a picture. “But having achieved little movie work made doing intimate scenes a bit troublesome.” To play somebody who dissects himself like a fly beneath a microscope, as a part of the preparation, Idan locked himself in a room for 2 months and browse each single factor about Kafka, together with his novels, diaries, and brief tales. “I moved out solely when the daylight started to dim. Agneiszka informed me that he was a bit neurotic!” His robust background in experimental theatre makes him realise the complicated character. “While taking part in a task, there’s all the time a battle between how a lot of your self, your feelings, you carry to the position and the way a lot you lose your self to the character — a mixture of the 2 works for me.”

He thanks Agneiszka for offering him with the energy-filled environment to do his factor. He refers back to the haunting sequence by which he indulges in calisthenics. “It is a reference to the system of calisthenics popularised by Danish athlete J.P. Muller that Kafka practised. The scene helps you perceive the person.”

Impressed by Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, Idan is open to engaged on an Indian movie. “Now I need to play one thing reverse to Kafka. I am engaged on an ecological thriller, a French-German co-production, the place I play one of many three activists who attempt to die by suicide.”

For now, Idan is on his option to Los Angeles to assist Agneiszka’s yet one more shot on the Oscars. “I’ll do my highest, however I’m a man who seems for acceptance relatively than consideration,” he logs off.

Franz was screened as a part of the Polish Focus at KIFF 2025