Kafka's Burrow

Country: Germany
Original title: Der Bau
Director: Jochen Alexander Freydank
Year: 2014

It's actually a little embarrassing... I started this blog eight months ago posting a review of Korean movie Futureless Things, which I've seen during a film festival last autumn. And now, after such a long hiatus, I'm going to write about a film I've watched on the very same day. With less than an hour break between the two. I just thought that since Kafka's Burrow is based on a literary work and just a short story at that, I can read it before writing a review. This was the first little stone that triggered an avalanche of delays, but I'm finally back and hopefully will post more frequently. And I did read the original story in the end. So, with no more excuses, here I go:

If You're familiar with Franz Kafka's prose, You know there's not exactly much action there. It's all about ideas and the mood. About exploring the absurd and paranoid. Sometimes the world, sometimes society, sometimes the mind and sometimes all, depending on the story. The Burrow is a trip into paranoid mind. Almost a study of it, a case-study at least. Well, raw data for a case-study for sure, because the protagonist is also a narrator and it's from his own words that we learn about his paranoia. About his obsession – the titular burrow.

In an original story, it literally was a burrow and the protagonist was some unidentified mole-like creature who was digging it to create a perfect shelter, obsessed with some unnamed potential danger and enemy. At first it seemed like natural if a little extreme concern over one's safety, but very quickly You notice that it's far from normal and more like off the charts. The protagonist is not only pursuing an impossible task of ruling out all possible risks. He doesn't see the burrow as rational means to increase his safety but rather as something that will save him from all danger through its very existence and therefore something that has to be protected at all costs, even compromising his safety. The burrow consumes all his time and every waking thought and he eventually falls into the pit of insanity. Or at least this is one possible interpretation.

In Freydank's adaptation protagonist is a human being (played by Axel Prahl). He's still a narrator, which is done in very neat and convincing way – protagonist is keeping a video diary, which is a perfectly normal and acceptable behavior in modern society. It allows the protagonist to address the audience directly and deliver sometimes quite lengthy speeches looking straight into the camera without being too theatrical or unrealistic. Thanks to that device the film uses original Kafka's language almost all the time, which makes it really faithful to the Kafkian spirit.

The burrow is a new flat in an apartment building. At least this is what it is at the beginning. Kafka's Burrow starts like so many modern horrors - with happy family moving into spacious and bright apartment and the mood is set in such a way, that You expect that something is wrong and something bad will happen soon. In a way, it is the case, but certainly not along the lines of commercial movies. The protagonist overreacts in trivial situations and is obsessed with a safety of his "burrow" more and more. As he neglects everything else but his shelter, the world around him undergoes a slow and gradual metamorphosis. So slow, that You might actually miss it for the most part and notice things are changing and falling apart only when the mood gets almost post-apocalyptic.

I'd say this shift is the biggest difference between Kafka's short story and Freydank's movie. In the story, there is no serious change in protagonist's situation. He's a paranoid animal holed in his burrow all the time. Some things happen but not very much really. Freydank decided to deal with this lack of action not by adding some events that would draw the viewer in, but by intensifying the mood and making it darker. He shows how protagonist changes from regular member of the society into complete lunatic wandering through ruins and slum-like landscapes. There is also a little twist there suggesting that even this initial picture isn't exactly right, bringing illusion into the equation, but I don't want to go into too much detail.

Overall Kafka's Burrow is a heavy and difficult film without specific plot and with a lot of talking. Exactly the kind of film that people enjoying Kafka's works should be able to appreciate.