(There are Spoilers) Dark and depressing movie about man's fight to keep his individualism in a world run and controlled by faceless and unfeeling bureaucracies. Franz Kafka, Jeremy Irons, has been quietly working as a clerk for a major government insurance company for almost nine years with the only person that he ever had a social relationship with being fellow clerk Edward Raban,Vladimir Gut. Edward had been secretly an active member of a revolutionary group that the secret police have been tracking and ends up dead floating in the Danube River.
Kafka informed that Edward committed suicide by police official Gruback, Armin Mueller-Stahl, takes it upon himself to find out what really happened to his friend. Kafka gets in touch with Edward's girlfriend and fellow insurance clerk Gabriela, Theresa Russell, that has him ending up joining the anti-government group that the late Edward Raban and Gabriela are members of.
Being a strong proponent of individualism himself Kafka fits right in with Gabriela and her fellow revolutionaries and become involved in overthrowing the government that he works for. A government that has enslaved him and his fellow workers by taking away their right to think for themselves. Where they eventually end up as a mindless mass of brainwashed zombies loyally obedient to every command, as senseless and ridicules as it is, that those in power give them.
Kafka getting a promotion by his boss the chief clerk, Alac Guinness, that was supposed to go to his dead friend Edward. What he doesn't know is that he's being spied on by the two bumbling assistants that he's been assigned and that the government has already put him on their sh*t-list as a person who's ideas are dangerous to the state.
It's later when Gabriela is fired from her job that Kafka realizes that the government, through it's secret police, is on to both him and the revolutionary group that he and Gabriela are members of. Thats when trying to track her down he finds this secret morgue that the government uses to store the hundreds of bodies of undesirables that it secretly murdered. Giving them false death certificates claiming that their deaths were due to natural causes.
Determined to get to the bottom of what's going on Kafka makes his way into the Castle where all the records of everyone in the country are stored. It's there that he comes face to face with both the madman Dr. Murnau, Ian Holm,who runs the place and his biggest and most frightening nightmare.
In the end Kafka goes back to his job as government clerk knowing that he as an individual can never defeat the massive and faceless bureaucracy that runs his, and the peoples, life. But through the power of the pen he can put his thoughts and ideas on paper and hopefully, when published, that will galvanize the people to rise up and tear down the bureaucracy that has taken away his, and the peoples, will as well as heart and soul.
Franz Kafka would not live to see his 41th birthday dying on June 3, 1924. Unknown at the time of his death his writing have become the inspiration to many writers and philosophers over the years in informing the public about that dark cold and unfeeling world. A world that Kafka observed during his lifetime, 1883-1924, and was force to live and suffer in.
Kafka informed that Edward committed suicide by police official Gruback, Armin Mueller-Stahl, takes it upon himself to find out what really happened to his friend. Kafka gets in touch with Edward's girlfriend and fellow insurance clerk Gabriela, Theresa Russell, that has him ending up joining the anti-government group that the late Edward Raban and Gabriela are members of.
Being a strong proponent of individualism himself Kafka fits right in with Gabriela and her fellow revolutionaries and become involved in overthrowing the government that he works for. A government that has enslaved him and his fellow workers by taking away their right to think for themselves. Where they eventually end up as a mindless mass of brainwashed zombies loyally obedient to every command, as senseless and ridicules as it is, that those in power give them.
Kafka getting a promotion by his boss the chief clerk, Alac Guinness, that was supposed to go to his dead friend Edward. What he doesn't know is that he's being spied on by the two bumbling assistants that he's been assigned and that the government has already put him on their sh*t-list as a person who's ideas are dangerous to the state.
It's later when Gabriela is fired from her job that Kafka realizes that the government, through it's secret police, is on to both him and the revolutionary group that he and Gabriela are members of. Thats when trying to track her down he finds this secret morgue that the government uses to store the hundreds of bodies of undesirables that it secretly murdered. Giving them false death certificates claiming that their deaths were due to natural causes.
Determined to get to the bottom of what's going on Kafka makes his way into the Castle where all the records of everyone in the country are stored. It's there that he comes face to face with both the madman Dr. Murnau, Ian Holm,who runs the place and his biggest and most frightening nightmare.
In the end Kafka goes back to his job as government clerk knowing that he as an individual can never defeat the massive and faceless bureaucracy that runs his, and the peoples, life. But through the power of the pen he can put his thoughts and ideas on paper and hopefully, when published, that will galvanize the people to rise up and tear down the bureaucracy that has taken away his, and the peoples, will as well as heart and soul.
Franz Kafka would not live to see his 41th birthday dying on June 3, 1924. Unknown at the time of his death his writing have become the inspiration to many writers and philosophers over the years in informing the public about that dark cold and unfeeling world. A world that Kafka observed during his lifetime, 1883-1924, and was force to live and suffer in.