You won't be disappointed!

Sadly Over-hyped

Powerful

Great Film overall

Much like David Cronenberg's 'Naked Lunch', 'Kafka' attempts to merge a biographical film and a literary adaptation, by combining elements from Franz Kafka's notoriously unfilmable books and stories with details from his real life. The thing is, where Steven Soderbergh's film is an admirable effort at filming Kafka's work, other films by more accomplished directors, made around the same time or several years earlier, managed to capture Kafka's spirit much more successfully without ever mentioning his name or the title of any of his works - Scorsese's 'After Hours', Woody Allen's 'Shadows and Fog', and to a lesser extent Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil' and Joel & Ethan Coen's 'Barton Fink' all achieve Kafka's unique feeling of futility and paranoia, as well as his pitch black sense of humor, while 'Kafka' resembles Kafka's writing mainly on the surface. This is the script's fault more than Soderbergh's, because the film looks great and delivers the dark, weird disconcerting feeling of Kafka's works, but by not delving into the philosophy behind them, by having almost no sense of humor, and by adhering to a pretty straightforward conspiracy plot, it remains little more than an aesthetic illustration of what a Kafka film might look like.Despite a weak script, the film manages several memorable scenes, mainly thanks to terrific cinematography and a wonderful cast - Jeremy Irons, surprisingly, not being one of the film's standout performance. Rather, it's more minor characters played by Joel Grey, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Keith Allen, Simon McBurney and the great Alec Guinness in his last feature film role that stick to the viewer's mind, and for brief moments they can create the sense of paranoia, of surreal, nightmarish bureaucracy that is at the root of Kafka's writing; again, without the underlying philosophy, there's something unsatisfying about the overall result, and the story keeps distracting from the more interesting aspects. The film is, overall, interesting but frustrating; it's probably worth watching for Kafka fans, but it's not good enough to truly appease them. On the other hand, it may be too confusing for anyone who isn't familiar enough with his work.

This is human nature under a magnifying glass.What an interesting cinematic experience... A memorable performance, as usual, by Jeremy Irons, whose trademark tormented restraint and meditative quietness make a compelling Kafka; the haunting, adequate cimbalom music with Romanian undertones; and the beautiful, mysterious Prague - these are only the first elements that get your attention. Mixing biographical detail with fiction is a clever trick, and the streets of Prague add a sense of claustrophobia and eeriness, enhanced by the black-and-white cinematography.The movie may not ring "true to Kafka" to everyone - surely, that's impossible - but I found it commendable as a daring experiment. Novel adaptations are rarely satisfying, so of course, some Kafka readers may feel uncomfortable or disappointed. Steven Soderbergh, who has a penchant for The Absurd (the dazzling "Schizopolis" comes to mind), is clearly an admirer of Kafka's work, and this interpretation feels like a personal homage to the great writer. Despite some clumsiness in the dialogue here and there, which is its main weakness, that "Kafkaesque" dreamlike quality is clearly present all throughout. Timeless exploration of the mind, filled with philosophical questions and sharp social commentary, "Kafka" ranks up there with the great "1984" and "Brazil".Recommended to everybody, not just to those who enjoy the theater of the absurd or Kafka in particular.

I just like Prague, what a beautiful place to photograph, how many deeply associative, almost mythical, images does one come across in Prague, castles and winding rivers and bridges and gargoyles and cobblestone squares and narrow alleys with walkway overpasses and dark old European colours. Plus I love Kafka, and anyone who holds a deep respect for Kafka will take pleasure in imagining his what his real life experiences may have been like if his real life experiences had included events analogous to those that take place in The Castle, which I have never read actually, but I think the events of the movie are taken from the events in that story. Anyway, though, Prague is beautiful and so is Kafka's writing. I've been to the Jewish quarter of Prague, Kafka's birth place, and the Jewish cemetery—it's otherworldly and the real life city now has the kind of romance in it that we usually find only in movies and novels and paintings and other forms of imagining—so, it's a wonderful place to shoot a movie.

I usually don't care if a movie has a point or not, as long as it's effective or compelling or original, or so bad it's good. But Steven Soderbergh's KAFKA is none of those things. It appears very pointless. The whole thing feels more like a trite exercise by people with too much time on their hands than anything else. The B&W cinematography wasn't even that great. And because the film is hampered with a distracting sense of deja vu (many elements in it have already been explored in several other movies, like BRAZIL), well, the whole thing ended up being dull, derivative and pointless. The excellent cast is wasted, certainly Theresa Russell, in what basically amounts to a cameo appearance disguised as a role. There's nothing new in KAFKA.