Kafka

Starring: Jeremy Irons

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

RS: Not Rated

1991 Comedy

"Kafka" finds Steven Soderbergh following up his character-driven debut, sex, lies, and videotape, with an exercise in style that, unfortunately, displays more energy than inspiration. Still, the look of the film -- shot in black and white by Walt Lloyd, until a climactic switch to color -- is stunning. The scene is Prague, circa 1919, and the play of light and shadow on the cobblestone streets is a film buff's cornucopia of expressionistic allusions -- from F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu and Fritz Lang's M to Carol Reed's Third Man.

Jeremy Irons plays Kafka, the insurance drone who slaves by day -- watched by his supervisor (Alec Guinness) and the office spy (Joel Grey) -- and writes feverishly at night in his garret. His stories are top weird for publication (one concerns a man who turns into a cockroach). Despite the real-life parallels, Soderbergh and writer Lem Dobbs (The Hard Way) aren't attempting a biography; their Kafka -- like Cronenberg's William Lee -- is a writer set loose in his own dark dreams.

Kafka pursues his lonely art until the disappearance of a co-worker involves him in a conspiracy that leads to a castle where the evil Dr. Murnau (Ian Holm) performs Frankenstein-like experiments. Given the film's potential, it's crushing to watch it dwindle down to a conventional horror film (for the record, Dobbs says his script was "mangled"). Soderbergh also squanders a first-rate cast, including Armin Mueller-Stahl as a cunning cop. Where Cronenberg succeeds in conveying the interior mind, Soderbergh stays disappointingly on the surface.

PETER TRAVERS
RS 623