David R. Walker

Archive for the ‘Agnieszka Holland’ Category

Franz

Director: Agnieszka Holland

Cast: Idan Weiss, Peter Kurth, Aaron Friesz, Katharina Stark, Sebastian Schwarz

Running Time: 2 hour and 7 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Film Festival: European Film Festival 2026 – check out website for full details – https://www.eurofilmfest.co.za/

Languages: French, German, Czech

PLEASE NOTE THIS FILM HAS ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Warning this film has a torture scene and graphic nudity.

Europa Europa, Washington Square and Chalatan director Agnieszka Holland’s new film simply titled Franz takes an unconventional and self-reflexive look at the strange life of famed Czech writer Franz Kafka who penned such extraordinary books as the infamous Metamorphosis, Amerika and The Trial.

Kafka was brought up in a wealthy Jewish family in Prague at the beginning of the 20^th century. He was the only son with two sisters and had a very strict and abusive textile merchant father Hermann Kafka expertly played by Peter Kurth.

Franz is played by Idan Weiss who encapsulates the awkwardness of Kafka as a character, not physically strong but clever and questioning. Kafka was hard working and employed in a large insurance company in Prague before and during World War I.

Following his lifelong friendship with Max Brod played by German actor Sebastian Schwarz (I am Your Man), Franz is encouraged in his writing which he finds quite difficult in between dealing with his overbearing family and his demands at the insurance company.

Eventually Franz breaks free from this restrictive environment when he meets Max’s cousin the beautiful Felice played by Carol Schuler and they move to Berlin where finally as a writer he has a room of his own. Here and in later years he penned his famous works while retaining the charm of a martyr.

Polish director Agnieszka Holland doesn’t offer the viewer a packaged conventional biography but instead a unique self-reflexive non-linear storyline in which several key figures in Franz’s life break the fourth wall of the screen and talk directly to the audience offering enticing insights into the complex character of Kafka.

Holland goes a step further as she also reflects on his cultural impact on European literature and how in the 21^st century the Franz Kafka museum in Prague has commodified the writer in the same vein that America has commodified their most famous artists and writers.

The commodification of famous writers is an ideal form of attracting tourists and for a beautiful city like Prague, the Kafka museum is a huge commercial attraction, something which Agnieszka Holland emphasizes in Franz.

As a film, Franz is an unconventional strongly European portrait of a writer that made the character Gregor Samsa famous as he transformed into a monstrous insect.

As World War I changed Europe, Kafka’s fame grew but his health declined.

Franz will appeal to literary enthusiasts and is a fascinating and strange portrait of a unique writer whose unconventionality changed the face of European literature just as the modernist writers were beginning to flourish in England and America in the 1920’s.

With lavish production values, Agnieszka Holland serves up an intellectually challenging film filled with some bizarre scenes especially at the treatment spa in Vienna, while commenting on the relevancy of Kafka in the 21^st century.

Franz gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is a unique and challenging film retaining its Bohemian quality and will appeal to lovers of Kafka and literary biographies. Highly recommended viewing for lovers of genuine European content.

Charlatan

Director: Agnieska Holland

Cast: Ivan Trojan, Josef Trojan, Juraj Loj, Jiri Cerny, Jaroslava Pokorna

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

Czech and German with English Subtitles

Running Time: 118 minutes

Charlatan is screened virtually at the 8th European Film Festival from 14th – 24th October 2021 – https://www.eurofilmfest.co.za/films/

In a similar vein to director Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game, Polish director Agnieska Holland’s handsome period drama Charlatan tackles the life and love of famed Czech healer Jan Mikolasec  played by Ivan Trojan who developed an uncanny knack for prescribing herbal remedies to patients based on their urine, a diagnosis determined by age and gender.

Most notably, Mikolasec managed to navigate the political and social turmoil of mid 20^th century Czechoslovakia as the country was first invaded and by the Nazi’s and then after World War 2, Czechoslovakia fell into the grip an equally totalitarian regime, the soviets as it got incorporated into the Iron Curtain until its liberation into glorious freedom during the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

Oscar nominated screenwriter and director of Europa Europa (1990), Agnieska Holland returns to the big screen with this touching film Charlatan about the tormented journey of Mikolasec and his hidden and rapturous love affair with his beautiful assistant Frantisek Palko, a truly stunning and muscular young man perfectly played by Slovakian actor Juraj Loj.

Both Mikolasec and Palko are married to women as a means to conceal their homosexuality as it was completely illegal both under the Nazi’s and under the equally cruel Soviet regime.

What director Agnieska Holland perfectly does is capture the conflicting emotions of this fascinating man, Mikolasec as he is tormented, cruel and gifted. Agnieska Holland who has featured prominently in directing several episodes of the brilliant political series House of Cards, once again highlights the slippery boundaries of sexuality amidst the shifting geo-political landscape in Czechoslovakia from the late 1930’s until the late 1950’s through the Nazi era and onto the Soviet era, a theme she returns to as she did so brilliantly in House of Cards.

Charlatan is a tough watch, it is both beautiful and horrific, and equal parts a semi-mythical tale of a talented herbalist and his beautiful assistant and their forbidden love affair, as they set up a business prescribing herbal remedies to the local population and earning money off their respective ailments.

The narrative is told in a series of flashbacks to Mikolasec’s youth, the younger version of himself ironically played by Ivan Trojan’s son Josef Trojan as he learns the secret of his tradecraft from a mysterious herbalist Mrs Muhlbacherova played by Jaroslava Pokorna.

Beautifully filmed, Charlatan gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and is a fascinating period piece about a Czech herbalist who didn’t achieve fame outside of Eastern Europe but went through a harrowing time in his own country. This film is recommended viewing.