Kafka (1991)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
After a colleague is murdered, insurance worker Kafka gets embroiled in an underground group who are attempting to thwart a secret organization that controls the major events in society.
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What critics compared Kafka to
Richard Ayoade’s second feature as director, The Double (Grade: B-) is a loose reworking of Dostoyevsky in the idiom of Brazil and Soderbergh’s Kafka.
Soderbergh followed up his intimate film about infidelities, insecurities, love, and neuroses with KAFKA in 1991.
Soderbergh excels on a grander scale (the sex scene with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight, the epic parallels of Traffic, even the pop spectacle of Ocean's Eleven), but when his artistic pretensions guide his filmmaking, disaster strikes (Kafka, Schizopolis, Full Frontal).
In truth, it's Soderbergh's first beautiful film, fulfilling the pockets of resplendence found in Kafka and Traffic.
As a postmodern work, Pulp Fiction succeeds where Soderbergh’s Kafka, which was also made of borrowed elements, failed…
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I don’t think I’d rank it as one of the best movies in a career that frequently has balanced entertainment with social significance (Erin Brockovich and The Informant) and that has seen the director employ a dazzling variety of approaches in movies such as Kafka (1991), King of the Hill (1993), Schizopolis (1996) and Bubble (2005).
Even ardent and undemanding Soderbergh fans who defend experimental jokes like the catatonic Kafka and the demented Bubble will have a hard time explaining this one.
In the wake of sex, lies, and videotape, Soderbergh went through a down period, with films like Kafka, the underrated King of the Hill , and The Underneath .
He has as varied and multifaceted a record as any director in the biz--- "sex, lies and videotape," an intimate and fascinating study of deteriorating urban marriages and relationships; a stylish thriller called Kafka; a heart-warming and memorable period piece about a boy surviving the Depression called King of the Hill; a colorful noir called The Underneath And there were others... documentaries, a daring cable TV series, a Spaulding Gray monologue.
He gets to make unconventional, experimental films like Kafka, Schizopolis and The Limey, while still making a few bucks doing "mainstream" films like King of the Hill and Out of Sight.
Always innovative but not always involving, they range from the sublime ("sex, lies and videotape," "King of the Hill," "Out of Sight") to the disappointing ("Kafka").
After his huge Sundance success sex, lies & videotape (1989), he turned to a black-and-white surreal mystery story, Kafka (1991), from a screenplay by the legendary Lem Dobbs, which quickly disappeared.
When broken down, The Limey's story (written by Lem Dobbs, who also wrote the screenplay for Soderbergh's Kafka) is a simple revenge tale that Soderbergh uses as the spine for his narrative reassemblage.