The Wish To Be a Red Indian: Kafka and Cinema 2024 / Mr. Kneff / USA, France 2024
To mark the release of a DVD box set in 2021, Steven Soderbergh decided to give some of his earlier films a new lease of life. One of them was Kafka, which “morphed” into Mr. Kneff, a story set in Prague in 1919 about a writer, whose miserable job provided him with literary inspiration. The new cut is twenty minutes shorter and Soderbergh also rearranged the narrative structure and coloured certain scenes to make a clearer distinction between reality and the protagonist’s imagination. The dialogues were replaced by subtitles; the music was also altered, incorporating, among others, the instrumental version of Metallica’s song “Enter Sandman”. Mr. Kneff, arguably a film about Kafka, but now without Kafka, in comparison with the original is thus noticeably estranged and more surreal.
Lorenzo Esposito
77 min / Color, DCP
Director Steven Soderbergh
/ Screenplay Alfred Polly
/ Dir. of Photography Walt Lloyd
/ Sound Mark Mangini
/ Editor Steven Soderbergh
/ Art Director Gavin Bocquet
/ Producer Stuart Cornfeld, Harry Benn
/ Production Pricel, Baltimore Pictures
/ Cast Jeremy Irons, Theresa Russell, Ian Holm, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Joel Grey, Jeroen Krabbé, Alec Guinness
Steven Soderbergh (1963, Atlanta, USA). Selected filmography: Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), Kafka (1991), King of the Hill (1993), Traffic (2000), Erin Brockovich (2000), Ocean's Eleven (2001), Side Effects (2013), The Laundromat (2019), Mr. Kneff (2024).
Steven Soderbergh
Film Director
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