The biopic is the vulgar but necessary tribute inherently populist cinema pays to more traditional, higher-brow art. Scholars and snobs might sneer at these films, and especially the way they love to transmute childhood trauma into creative drive, all in the service of a tidy narrative arc. But we secretly sort of love them too, especially when they’re a little tacky, and preferably accurate enough to offer the cinematic equivalent of a well-edited Wikipedia page or, for the more serious-minded, a scholarly biography. It helps if the subject, in addition to being admired and talented, if not sympathetic, had a dramatic and interesting life, like mentally imbalanced painter Vincent Van Gogh. Even better: a life we know very little about, like playwright and poet William Shakespeare, making plenty of room for fictional invention.

Given that the writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was not famous in his lifetime, it’s remarkable that we know as much about him as we do. Indeed, it’s a miraculous fluke that we know his work at all given that he instructed his friend and literary executor Max Brod to destroy all his writings and personal letters after he died. Luckily, Brod was, in some ways, the world’s worst literary executor — although he did risk his life at points to smuggle the work out of Czechoslovakia as he escaped Nazis to make his way to Palestine, as dramatized in Franz, Agnieszka Holland’s excellent new biopic.

In fact, as far as I can work out, this may be the only proper, life-spanning biopic made so far about Kafka, although there are several films that turn him into a character caught in a world much like his own absurdist, menacing fiction (see Steven Soderbergh’s 1991 exercise Kafka) or ones that memorialize a small slice of Kafka’s bio. (German directors Judith Kaufmann and Georg Maas’ The Glory of Life focuses on the last year of the writer’s life, for instance.)

Holland, whose last film Green Border was one of her best, seems to know conventional biopics are inherently cheesy, and risk being boring and shapeless if they plod chronologically through the subject’s life. Plus, she has to contend with the fact that Kafka’s life wasn’t especially eventful on the surface. He grew up in an affluent German-Jewish family in Prague; had a rocky relationship with his overbearing father Hermann, but a better one with his mother and sisters; worked in the legal department for an insurance company; got engaged but broke it off and never married; caught tuberculosis and died, aged 40.

His writing, to which he was devoted, was the most interesting thing about him, an intensely rich and motley life of the mind. Only his near contemporary, the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (who survived into old age), who weirdly enough also was a lawyer for an insurance company, rivals Kafka in terms of the inverse proportion of literary originality and canonical significance to dullness of life story.

In order to surmount the challenges the raw facts present his biopic-makers, Holland, screenwriter Marek Epstein, editor Pavel Hrdlicka and the team have opted to create a ludic, kaleidoscopic montage film that flits like a fevered mind around the subject’s life and beyond, leaping decades with a single cut.

That said, the structure never feels random; there are obvious causal connections. For instance, we see young Franz (played as a child by Daniel Dongres) being “taught” to swim by his father (a superb Peter Kurth) by being chucked into a river after just a few lessons, compelled to sink or swim (he sinks). That scene is directly followed by flash-forwards to tourists in the present day admiring a riverbank spot where the adult Kafka would always rest after a swim. Similarly, a section that touches on how prolific a letter-writer the adult Franz was (now played by Idan Weiss, a dead ringer for the real Kafka but also a subtle, gifted performer) then cuts to a tour guide (Emma Smetana) at the Kafka museum pointing out that, in sheer weight, his personal papers are dwarfed by the mountain of wood pulp about him produced over the years.

Indeed, Holland takes a puckish delight — one that Kafka would probably have been equally amused by — in showing how this introverted, neurasthenic perfectionist has become an icon in modern-day Prague, with burger restaurants, statues, tours, tourist traps and all manner of tchotchkes pedaled in his name.

Nevertheless, the film strives to offer a rounded portrait of Franz that gets across his intellect, his sense of humor (there’s a great scene where he reads, smiling broadly throughout, passages from The Trial to a room of guffawing peers), and his complex emotional inner life. A fair amount of screen time is devoted to his tortured relationship with Felicie Bauer (a tender Carol Schuler), the Berlin-based relative of Brod’s to whom Kafka proposed. Not long before their engagement was to be officially announced, Franz became besotted with Felice’s best friend Grete Bloch (Gesa Schermuly) and started writing letters to her, an absurd romantic farrago that would seem farcical if it weren’t so very sad. The closest the film comes to a happy-ish ending is the limning of his later affair with married journalist Milena Jesenska (Jenovefa Bokova), a relationship that at least made him happy for a time.

Even with its two hour-plus running time, Franz feels dense but nimble, Tomasz Naumiuk’s cinematography often in motion, or static as the characters flow frenetically from room to room within the frame, especially in the Kafka family home. We come to appreciate why Franz would crave silence so as to be able to pursue his craft. Even so, the original score by Mary Komasa and Antoni Komasa Lazarkiewicz, supplemented by sadcore indie tracks by Trupa Trupa, is a presence throughout, acting like a sonic glue that holds the chronologically disparate sequences of the film together while adding a distinct modernity to the tone.

However, it will be newcomer Weiss’ intense, playful, sweet rendition of Kafka that people will remember this film for — a portrait of a complicated man who lived mostly in his head but was capable of tenderness with friends and lovers. Also, Franz doesn’t minimize the centrality of Kafka’s Jewish identity and Zionist beliefs, but neither does it pander in any way to any particular audience. The fact that almost none of his family survived the Holocaust is not neglected. But the film doesn’t dwell on that part of the story, all of which unfolds long after Franz’s death.

The tense near-final scene where Brod just escapes the scrutiny of a Gestapo officer on a train, with all of Kafka’s papers in his satchel, is all you really need to know about the rise of fascism that Kafka foretold in a way. Similarly to his writings, Franz the film is interested in a distilled, abstracted meditation on power, the law, control and desire that transcends the banal borders of realism.  

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Warning: Full spoilers for the film follow.

I’ve been a fan of Austin Butler’s ever since I saw him in The Shannara Chronicles. While the series left much to be desired as an adaptation of one of my very favorite epic fantasy series, Butler really did shine as Wil Ohmsford. Little did I know that he would go on to have a remarkable subsequent career, excelling at playing a particular type of tortured and troubled young man, all while looking like a fallen angel. (Yes, I might be a little in love with him after watching his film).

The most recent iteration of this figure is Hank Thompson, a young man who once had a promising career in baseball but, due to a drunk driving accident–one that took the life of his friend–he has spent the subsequent years drinking away his troubles and carrying on a quasi-relationship with Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz). His entire life is turned upside down, however, when his next-door neighbor Russ (Matt Smith) leaves for London, which sets in motion a train of events that sees Hank dealing with a corrupt cop, Elise Roman (Regina King), her goons, and two Hasidic brothers who are more than happy to kill anyone who gets in their way (Liv Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio). While Hank eventually gets a happy ending of sorts, he has to sacrifice much along the way.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Darren Aronovsky’s Caught Stealing is one of my favorite movies of this year. It’s the type of crime thriller that knows what its purpose is and it doesn’t try to be anything else. It is one of a long history of films about an everyman who finds himself caught up in forces that he knows nothing about and has to use all of his considerable skills to survive. There are more than a few bodies left by the wayside, but this isn’t a cynical film. It is, instead, a blunt look at the dreadful lengths to which people will go for money.

Indeed, there’s a beautiful brutality to the film, one that’s anchored by Butler’s performance. He’s one of those actors who manages to combine in his person the beauty and the hardness of masculinity. Part of it is, I think, the cherubic beauty of his face, which looks like it sprang out of a Renaissance painting, and this sits somewhat at odds with the lean muscularity of his frame. Aronovsky gives us many opportunities to appreciate his masculine beauty, and there are moments when his raw sexuality seems to just envelope the screen and us along with it.

At the same time, Butler also makes clear that Hank is a man haunted by his past and, at first, he struggles to make sense of the violent world of which he is now a part, let alone figure out a way to survive. As the violence escalates, he finds that he, too, has to give away a little slice of his humanity in order to make it out alive. This isn’t to say that there isn’t some humor here, too, because there is. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a crime comedy, but there were some moments when I did laugh out loud (though it’s fair to point out that most of these moments involved Bud the cat, who proves to be Hank’s best sidekick).

As much as Caught Stealing is about Hank’s efforts to stay alive–and, if possible, to keep those he loves from getting caught in the crossfire–it’s also about making peace with his traumatic past. At numerous points in the film he wakes up from troubled dreams in which he is forced to relive the terrible moment when his drunk driving ended up killing his best friend and shattering his knee, thus derailing his promising baseball career. It’s only when he takes accountability for what he did that he can move forward, that he can stop running and seize control of his own destiny. There’s something apposite and even poetic about the fact that, in the film’s third act, he slams the car he’s driving into a pillar, killing the Hasidic brothers Lipa and Shmully in the process. Given that these two men were the ones responsible for the death of his beloved Yvonne, this moment is even more satisfying.

Butler might be the heart and soul of this film, but he’s matched by a formidable supporting cast. Of these, the best is, I think, Regina King, who never fails to impress. From the moment that Roman appears in Hank’s apartment, one gets the sense that there’s more to her than meets the eye. She seems to take an inordinate amount of pleasure in playing mind games with Hank, trying to jar something loose, as she puts it. As soon becomes clear, however, she’s brutal and violent and ruthless, and she will do anything to get her hands on the money that Russ has stolen. And, because King is just such a charismatic screen presence–and because she so effortless exudes authority–you almost find yourself wanting Hank to just do what she says so he can make it out alive (even if, as is also clear, she’ll almost certainly kill him once she gets what she wants).

And, lest you be concerned about Bud the cat, let me rush to tell you that he makes it all the way to the end! I must admit that I was a bit nervous, and if this was a movie in which the cat dies I most certainly would have hated it. Instead, the fact that Hank is so willing to look out for a feline companion that Russ foisted on him says a great deal about his innate goodness, and one can’t help but cheer for him as he tries to wrest some control of his life from those who consistently try to take away what little agency he has.

That, I think, is what makes Caught Stealing such a perfect film for our present moment. We’re all at the mercy of bad faith actors, and many of us feel as if we’re playing a game that is rigged against us, with no real knowledge of the rules or who we can trust. This film reminds us that it’s up to us to seize our destiny, though hopefully with fewer bodies left behind.

There is an elegiac tone and a dash of wit in this lovely, small-scale film held together by Willem Dafoe‘s magnetic presence and natural but compelling performance. He plays Lucius, the American manager of a grand hotel in Vienna, a job he has taken pride in for two decades and will lose soon when a new owner takes over. “This is the house where I live. And now I find myself forced to abandon it,” he says in voiceover. His sadness is lightened a bit by the oddity of the details he values in that same voiceover. “Hotel Intercontinental Vienna. The first luxury brand hotel in the world and the first one to have telephones in every bathroom.”

As we follow him through several days, he shows himself to be annoyed at the change, unwilling to admit that the hotel’s glory days are over, and finally reconciled to something new, whatever that turns out to be. The Souffleur would be a very different work without Dafoe. He makes the character and the entire film down-to-earth and accessible, two things Gastón Solnicki is not known for.

The Argentinian-born director is known and admired for his artistically daring but often cryptic films, as varied as Papirosen (2011), built from his own family’s trove of home movies, and Kekszakallu (2016), a quasi-documentary about adolescent girls coming of age, which won that year’s FIPRESCI prize for best film in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival.  

Even with Dafoe, Solnicki’s approach hasn’t changed all that much. This latest Venice premiere is definitely a work of fragments, isolated scenes that amount to a fly-on-the-wall view of Lucius but are not meant to create a traditional narrative, or for the pieces to fit together as neatly as a jigsaw puzzle.

Weaving in and out of Lucius’ story are black-and-white images of the hotel in the past, from construction to children ice skating outside, to the glamour of a crowded dining room. Much of that footage is archival (the Intercontinental is a real hotel in Vienna, and not dead), some of it enhanced by Solnicki. Those scenes serve to blend the past and present in a way that suits the film’s impressionistic style.

Every now and then some of the hotel’s staff members face the camera and announce their name and room number, for no apparent reason except to let us know they are there and probably about to be displaced. One of those workers is Lilly (Lilly Lindner), Lucius’ daughter, who grew up in the hotel but is far less attached to it than her father and ready to move on. In one scene between her and Lucius, he expresses his concern, looking at her arm and asking if she has been harming herself again. But where a traditional film would lean into the family dynamics, The Souffleur lets those moments sit with us and moves on. At one point we see giraffes. Who knows why?

Although Lucius spends a lot of time walking the halls and checking the hotel’s dining room, he also meets the new owner, Facundo Ordoñez, a rich Argentinian played by Solnicki. Improbably, they have a cordial relationship. And when Ordoñez plays tennis, Solnicki gives him a wiry nervous energy that adds a touch of humor.

There is nothing funny about the film’s jokey title, which is just a strained metaphor. A soufflé rises slowly in the oven at the start, and Lucius and another staff member debate why the chef’s soufflés have been bad lately. The falling soufflé as a symbol of the crumbling hotel is the kind of heavy-handed touch Solnicki rarely indulges.

More often the images are evocative and visually stunning, shot by Rui Poças, the cinematographer who often works with Miguel Gomes, including on the recent, visually arresting Grand Tour. Outdoor scenes especially are artfully composed, such as a distant view of a bridge with the river flowing under it in the foreground, or the glistening look of a puddle on the street at night. Solnicki often likes to keep the camera still, as people walk in and out of the frame.

The Souffleur is a brief hour and 18 minutes long, and just as much a tone poem as it is a character study. Dafoe brings ballast and humanity to it, uniting its fragments as Lucius decides what to do with his future. It’s worth remembering that Dafoe started his career in theater as a member of the avant-garde Wooster Group and understands stories that defy conventional narratives. He is just the person to make this beautifully made little film come to life.