I recently read the book Amerika, by Franz Kafka. It was pretty good, but I don’t really mean to do a book report here. One thing that I thought while reading the book, though, was how much I wanted it made into a movie: not so much because the story is particularly compelling in movie form, but rather because I wanted to see Kafka’s Bizarro America come to life on the big screen.
You see, Kafka writing a novel about the United States is like me writing a novel about, say, Lesotho. I’m pretty sure I could find it on a map, but I’ve never met someone from there and all I know about their way of life is what I’ve gleaned from vaguely remembered National Geographic articles and bigoted stereotypes. Kafka never left central Europe and as far as I can tell from his writing spent the best part of his life sealed in a dark room with his own thoughts. The picture of America that he paints is a strange combination of European caricatures of the country and the unrestrained imagination of a very creative person with only the Austro-Hungarian Empire to draw on for raw material.
I imagine the opening part of the book, in which the protagonist arrives in New York, as a kind of American Tail from Hell. Sailing past the Statue of Liberty, her sword raised aloft in what would be a cutting jibe at the Bush administration if the book had been written 90 years later, our hero helps a stoker get fired and is promptly whisked off to the first in a series of castles (!!!) owned by his uncle, a senator. The castle scene alone would have infinity times more cool things than The Matrix, as it contains both a magic bottomless desk and room-sized shower (2/0), both of which I immediately wanted as soon as I read about them. In Kafkamerika, there are subways everywhere and traffic cops stand in little castles (!!!) high above the road. Who wouldn’t put down eight bucks just to see that world on screen?
An even better Kafka movie would be The Metamorphosis, though I think it would only end up being about fifteen minutes long. I think this would be a good next project for Pixar or Dreamworks, which have extensive experience in creating sympathetic characters out of insects but which can’t seem to get past the “Loveable loser who becomes the hero in the end” plotline. I’d like to see if they could do Gregor Samsa with no dialogue whatsoever, though if they insisted on retaining Jerry Seinfeld he would be welcome to take a stab at the sound of “monstrous clicking mandibles.”
Just because it wouldn’t be a comedy doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be suitable for kids, either. Some judicious editing, to include, say, the picnic scene at the end of the story, could make the trailer seem positively charming. Charming enough to get families to bring their kids, who would then spend the rest of their lives wetting the bed every time they woke up with a headache, fully expecting to have been transformed into a “monstrous vermin” who will soon be pelted to death with rotten garbage by his own family.
It would sure as hell freak more people out than Hostel VII, and in the end, is that not what the movies are all about?