The temporal and geographical distortions that characterizes Kafka’s prose seems particularly difficult to adapt to the language of cinema. The Trial, his best-known novel, is characterized by its lack of forward motion, sending its protagonist on frantic narrative loops that continuously frustrate his desire for progress. Aside from its opening chapter, the book is pointedly …
Steven Soderbergh, screenwriter Lem Dobbs, the cast and crew come together to produce one of the more striking films of the director’s career, which is saying a lot considering the stunning number of vastly different projects he helmed. It is difficult to peer one’s eyes away from Kafka.
The Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky has been well served by cinema, especially his major works Crime & Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot, all of which have received numerous adaptations throughout the decades. The latter was lavished with a recent Estonian take, after receiving a Japanese decoding by Kurosawa no less, as well as Indian and (naturally) Soviet versions. It has taken until 2013 for a filmmaker brave enough to approach Dostoyevsky’s binary second novel; there is a certain numerical sense of doubling, since Richard Ayoade has decided to allocate his second film as The Double, an ambitiously promising plea following Submarine back in 2010.