Film Series Kafka in the Cinema: „The Castle“ by Michael Haneke

Director: Michael Haneke

Austria 1997, 123 min., original version

With Ulrich Mühe, Susanne Lothar, Ortrud Beginnen, Udo Samel and others

Surveyor K.'s attempt to get into the castle fails, as does his attempt to settle in the village community belonging to the castle. The harder K. tries, the further away he gets from his goal. The impenetrability and arbitrariness of the castle's bureaucracy prevents any clarification of his social and existential situation. In the end, K. remains what he was on the day of his arrival: a tolerated stranger - at best.

On the 100th anniversary of the Prague-based German-language world author's death, the Prague City Library, in cooperation with the German Cultural Forum for Eastern Europe and the Goethe-Institut Prague, is showing the film adaptation of Franz Kafka's prose fragment The Castle by Michael Haneke with Czech subtitles. Stars such as Ulrich Mühe and Susanne Lothar lend the adaptation the coolness, mysteriousness and forlornness befitting both the director's work and the exceptional author, who was born in 1883 in what was then Austria-Hungary.

The multi-award-winning film was praised by critics for capturing the essence of Kafkaesque situations that are „crystal clear and mysterious at the same time“; it was described as having a „coolly authentic-realistic touch and a claustrophobic narrowness“ that matched Kafka's work (Filmstarts). Filmdienst's verdict: „An intense film adaptation of Franz Kafka's novel, which focuses on the increasing resignation and isolation of the main character, played with great intensity by Ulrich Mühe. The intended faithfulness to the original is supported by a narrator who reads passages from Kafka's text and places them in a tense relationship to the events of the film.“ On kino.de, a „congenial kinship“ between Haneke and Kafka is noted: „With icy, night-heavy images, Haneke transforms Kafka's last novel into a cold utopia of futility, whose relentless mechanics are only softened by the sonorous narrative voice of Udo Samel“.

The film series is organized by the Kommunales Kino mon ami, Weimar, the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar, the German Cultural Forum for Eastern Europe and the Thuringian State Agency for Civic Education.