Das Schloß (Michael Haneke, 1997)

Haneke's TV adaptation of Kafka's unfinished novel The Castle is in some ways the happy marriage of two unhappy artists, the Austrian director having demonstrated many of the same preoccupations throughout his career as the Austro-Hungarian writer did: deep pessimism at man's random inhumanity to man, the oppressive power of unquestioned orthodoxy and a sense of the absurdity of the world. So the end result of the union feels at once Kafka's voice made celluloid and Haneke's hand on the tiller, with no conflict between the two presences. Whether it works as a whole is quite another matter, and the conclusion has to be that it doesn't.
The protagonist is Ulrich Mühe, who arrives in a snowbound town, expecting to take up a position as a land surveyor, and instead finds himself trapped by unfathomable levels of bureaucracy and societal pettiness. The actor is not at fault, but this time the everyman does not speak to us enough: his actions are frequently as irrational or spiteful as everyone else's, something that Josef K. in the closely akin The Trial was not prone to. It reduces the power of our indignation at the ludicrous system portrayed when everyone on screen is acting sans marbles. And then, after several hours of going around in circles, the film ends midway through a scene because that's where the novel was cut short, which does rather make you wonder what the point of the exercise was. It never is an easy ride with Haneke, but this just feels wilful.

5/10