Miracle workers

Miracle workers


By DQ
March 26, 2024

IN FOCUS

Director David Schalko and writer Daniel Kehlmann join NDR head of fiction Christian Granderath and ORF head of features Klaus Lintschinger to reveal how they came together for a biopic of Franz Kafka, airing in the centenary year of the celebrated novelist’s death.

Much like Franz Kafka himself, a six-part biopic of the iconic German-language writer has some pretty big ideas. Rather than following his existence from cradle to grave, each episode of Kafka comes from the perspective of someone who played an important part in his life, while numerous devices – from narration and flashbacks to title cards, flash-forwards and breaking the fourth wall – are used to tell his story.

Director David Schalko (M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder) and writer Daniel Kehlmann (Das letzte Problem) never intended to tell Kafka’s story in linear fashion. Instead, they wanted to create a darkly comic series that explores his life, love affairs and friendships with an eye on his legacy as the author of stories including The Castle, The Trial and The Metamorphosis.

Debuting in March, Kafka is a coproduction between Vienna-based Superfilm, Germany’s ARD and ORF in Austria, with a cast that includes Joel Basman in the title role, David Kross, Nicholas Ofczarek and Liv Lisa Fries. ORF Enterprise is handling international distribution.

As Schalko, Kehlmann, NDR head of fiction Christian Granderath and ORF head of features Klaus Lintschinger explained during a panel at this year’s Berlinale Series, a unique set of circumstances came together – as did ORF and all nine of Germany’s ARD regional public broadcasters, led by NDR – to ensure this series would debut in the year marking the 100th anniversary of Kafka’s death.

Starring Joel Basman, Kafka tells the writer’s story from the perspective of different people in his life

It was 10 years ago that David Schalko first contacted Klaus Lintschinger with the idea to create a television series about Franz Kafka, based on the biographies by Reiner Stach.

Lintschinger: Imagine there’s a phone call saying, ‘I’ve just read this amazing book; it’s only a couple of thousand pages and we have to do a series about it.’ It’s an irresistible proposition for entertaining, primetime television, which is what we do.

Schalko: That was 10 years ago. I called Klaus, and he was saying it would be so easy, everyone will do Kafka. This was not the case, of course. It took 10 years between the phone call we had, and the phone call we had when Christian told me he had heard about the project and he wanted to give it a chance. He said he needed two weeks to call all the ARD channels because everyone should spend a little on the project, which, against all odds, happened. We were working for this project for years; Daniel wrote it, and different constellations were trying to make it happen. Now it has found the perfect channels, because public TV is where it belongs.

Stach’s biographies were the inspiration behind the series, which seeks to dramatise not only Kafka’s life but also the way his writing evolved and took shape.

Schalko: When I read the biographies, I thought they were some of the best biographies I’d ever read, not only because of Kafka. It has something to do with the way they are written. It’s so much more than the world of Kafka; it’s a disappeared world that you dive into with these books. What also interested me and Daniel is that it made it so clear how great literature rises out of life and how it works. That’s what interested us because there are so many other biopics about the life of writers but we never see the process of writing in that way, how the story is developed.

Kehlmann: Kafka is the world’s most famous writer. Even people who have never read him, they have a notion of him. He’s the defining writer of our time and many times since he led his life – and that’s the point. It was a rather small and unassuming life in many ways. It was much more interesting than people know, but also it wasn’t a big life. But the amazing story that Reiner Stach tells is how out of this small life came those amazingly big, nightmarish ideas that captured the world. That, I felt, is really a story worth telling.

The creative team describe Franz Kafka as ‘the defining writer of our time’

Three “miracles” needed to take place before the long-gestating series could get a green light.

Lintschinger: Miracle one is David believed this could be done. Miracle two is that Daniel gets to write it and make 1,000-plus pages into a primetime television experience. But miracle number three, no less a miracle, is that somebody actually pulled it together. The broadcaster that made it happen was NDR, with ARD support, and Christian made it happen.

Granderath: It was really simple in the end. I got a call from Klaus one day and he asked me to participate in a movie, which we would have done 30 years ago but it wasn’t the right project for us now. Shortly before, I’d read there will be the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death and had said to colleagues that we should do something for that date. Then Klaus said, ‘I know two guys who are really suffering, would you like to meet them?’ We met a week later in Berlin and everything started rolling for one-and-a-half years, and then shooting began. That’s only a short time for a complicated project. We weren’t able to finance it ourselves, so the whole of ARD, which is a little miracle in these times, decided to do it together, and the nine channels of ARD coproduced together with ORF and [producer] Superfilm.

One of the broadcaster stipulations was that the series should be entertaining, and not an art house project specifically for the ‘Kafka crowd.’

Schalko: You don’t have to have read Kafka to see the series. That’s the most important thing about it. It was very important for us to find an entertaining way to tell the story, with humour but without losing the intelligence. And it was clear to me that Daniel should write it because of his ability to make something complicated, deep and serious into something entertaining, with humour, and for everyone to understand.

Born in Prague, German-speaking author Kafka died in June 1924

The first decision was to tell the story from the perspectives of the important people in Kafka’s life, rather than making a traditional biopic.

Kehlmann: The first episode was about [author and journalist] Max Brod and their friendship, the second was about Felice Bauer and their never-ending, weird relationship. That then led to another thing, where the style of the show is constantly shifting. For example, the fourth episode is called The Office and it’s a workplace comedy. The fifth episode, about Milena Jesenská, is a romantic story that takes place in real time, in 45 minutes, in the woods. The last episode is called Dora [after his final lover Dora Diamant], but it’s also about him writing The Castle. It’s very visual and fluid and mythically powerful.
With the different perspectives came the different styles of the episodes. For the things Kafka develops in his mind, David uses horror film elements. All that came from the idea to not do a traditional biopic, and we arrived at that very quickly because we really knew what we didn’t want it to be. Then we were off and running. Reiner Stach was always there to help us, but the most important thing was an idea about style and comedy. Kafka was a guy who liked to have a laugh and had a real sense of humour, even though it was a strange sense of humour, as you can see in the show. It was a very joyful collaboration.

Schalko: A lot of Kafka clichés aren’t true, like the idea that the company he worked for was always very dark, like hell. It was the complete opposite – it was a very light place, a lot of writers went there and they all adored Kafka. Another cliché is maybe that he was an outsider, which is also not true because he had a lot of friends and knew a lot of famous people in the world of literature. He was not sitting at home all day writing and suffering from what he wrote. He was a very social man with a lot of friends.

The period drama also drew inspiration from an unlikely contemporary source.

Kehlmann: The stylistic model for it was a show that was very big when I wrote this and I still really love: Fleabag. You have a story that could be depressing but, from the style and the way it’s told, it’s hilarious. That’s why we decided to use a device from Fleabag, in which the main character turns to the camera and talks to the audience. In Kafka, he never does that, but everyone else does. He’s the miracle everyone is trying to solve. I was always aware of that as a model for how to do comedy about a dark topic.

The biggest challenge facing the creative team was how to tell Kafka’s life story, a task mirrored in the series by the narrator stopping and starting again, unsure how to begin.

Schalko: We were talking a lot, then Daniel wrote it. It’s not very easy to write a life story, because it’s not a story, it consists of fragments. What do you leave out and what do you tell? A lot of things are not in the series, but we decided the most interesting things are all the things connected to his literature. That was what interested us and what’s maybe different from other biopics.

Kehlmann: You really get to know his writing. We do have the bug [from The Metamorphosis] in episode three, you do see the castle, you see the torture machine [from In the Penal Colony]. We felt like this couldn’t just be something in the background because this is what his life is all about, finding these images.
It was incredibly harmonious. We never had a serious argument. We’re still friends. We were always on the same page, and Christian was unbelievably supportive. Sometimes there were notes, like you have to have, and we were very grateful and took them and it became better and better, but there was never any pressing moment. It was one of those times when all the stars seemed to align.

Schalko: The great luck we didn’t anticipate was the Kafka centenary, which made it possible. We had the project long before and we didn’t quite think of it, but the centennial made it possible.

The show debuted on ORF on March 24 and launches on ARD today

There was also the question of who would play Kafka.

Kehlmann: Joel was such a piece of luck. What he does is just unbelievable. When I talked to people in the beginning, everyone said, ‘Who’s going to play Kafka?’ He’s the only writer who has his own brand. Everyone knows his face, everyone has an idea of his profile, so who’s going to play that? It was such a piece of luck.

Schalko: For eight years – maybe this is why it didn’t happen for so long – I had no idea who should play Kafka. The scripts were perfect, but who would play him? Then Joel came like a miracle. My casting director suggested him – I had worked with him before but I wasn’t thinking about him as Kafka – and Daniel’s friend had mentioned him. So [his name] came from different sides. There was no alternative. It was so clear it would be him, and not just to do with him looking similar to Kafka. It has something to do with soul. He has a Kafka in him.

Kehlmann: A huge highlight is Liv Lisa Fries, who plays Milena, Kafka’s great love in an affair that only lasted four days. Lars Eidinger is [poet Rainer Maria] Rilke. Christian Friedel is Franz Werfel, and he is in [2023 film] The Zone of Interest. Even in the fourth episode, Kafka’s landlady is played by the great Katharina Thalbach and it’s a very small part. It has a lot to do with David – when he asks people, they come and there are very few directors who can do that now, who can ask Lars to do just one scene and he will do it.

Kafka stands out as an example of edgy, risk-taking television – and as an example of why traditional broadcasters still have a future in the age of streaming.

Granderath: It’s necessary to do projects like this and to be aware of cultural heritage, and to do it in an entertaining and original way. It’s really fun to watch the actors, it’s something I didn’t expect, being so perfect. It’s a joy to see that because for me, [Stach’s work] is the best biography I ever read and it’s worth reading it beside our series. And the future? As long as something like Kafka is possible, I’m happy to be part of the future.

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