Frank (2014) [Blu-ray]
Comedy | Drama | Music | Mystery

Tagline: When you think you've gone far enough, go farther.

Frank is a comedy about a young wannabe musician, Jon, who discovers he's bitten off more than he can chew when he joins a band of eccentric pop musicians led by the mysterious and enigmatic Frank and his terrifying sidekick, Clara. Frank's uniqueness lies in the fact that he makes music purely for the joy of creating...and because he wears a giant fake head. After a rocky start, Jon ingratiates himself with the band members, and they retreat to a cabin in the woods to record an album. As his influence waxes, creative tensions mount, and the band's entire raison d'etre is called into question.

Storyline: Jon, a young wanna-be musician, discovers he's bitten off more than he can chew when he joins an eccentric pop band led by the mysterious and enigmatic Frank.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov, October 12, 2014 -- Screened at the Sundance Film Festival, Lenny Abrahamson's "Frank" (2014) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Curzon Film World/Artificial Eye. The supplemental features on the disc include an original trailer for the film; deleted scenes; behind the scenes featurette; audio commentary with Lenny Abrahamson, actor Domhnall Gleeson, and composer Stephen Rennicks; and second audio commentary with writers Jon Ronston and Peter Straughan. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-B "locked".

Young and ambitious musician Jon (Domhnall Gleeson, True Grit, About Time) is invited to join an avant-garde rock band when its keyboardist attempts to drown himself. Convinced that recognition and glory are just around the corner, Jon enthusiastically accepts the invitation and the band heads to the countryside to record their next album.

The leader of the band is Frank (Michael Fassbender, Hunger, Shame), a shy genius who wears a huge plastic head. Frank eats with a straw and does not take off the plastic head even when he showers. The band's second influential figure is Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Donnie Darko, Secretary), a seemingly perpetually upset beauty who has her own ideas how the band should sound and act while performing in front of its fans. Most of the time Frank and Clara get along well, but occasionally they argue and the band's remaining members are forced to choose a winner.

The band is eventually invited to perform at the SXSW music festival in front of an enthusiastic crowd of fans, the overwhelming majority of whom have discovered it through Youtube, and a few reporters. Shortly after the band gets on the stage, however, Frank collapses. Instead of destroying its image, the event cements the band's image as an underground sensation. Jon and Frank find then peace in a cheap motel, but after a few angry exchanges the genius with the plastic head disappears.

Frank, the new film from Irish director Lenny Abrahamson, is in a category of its own. It is part melancholic comedy, part acid drama that fits somewhere between the works of Gus van Sant and Takashi Miike. Indeed, it has that unique ability to completely detach the viewer from contemporary reality and make even the utterly bizarre look reasonable.

The events in the film are seen strictly through Jon's eyes. As he becomes closer with Frank his ambitions evolve and he begins to see the world around him differently. In the process he also learns a lot about his strengths and weaknesses.

Music occupies a major part of the film, but this isn't a music film. It is about learning to communicate in a wired world and create when all boundaries appear to have been broken. The film can be quite funny at times but also incredibly depressing because many of its observations about modern reality are spot on -- and they aren't pretty. The film is loosely based on the memoirs of Jon Ronson, who was the keyboardist for Chris Sievey's comedy character Frank Sidebottom.

The cast is very good. Gleeson's character transformation is credible and convincing. Gyllenhaal is also excellent as the difficult to communicate with keyboard/synth player. The film's true star, however, is Fassbender. Despite the fact that his face isn't seen until the very end, he is chiefly responsible for the film's identity.

The actors learned to play all of the instruments Frank's band uses. During the practice sessions and the performance at the SXSW music festival, they performed all of the tracks live.

Director Abrahamson and cinematographer James Mather shot Frank digitally on location in Ireland and the United States. Mather also collaborated with Abrahamson on his directorial debut, Adam & Paul, a black comedy about two drug addicts living in Dublin.

It takes a bit of time to get used to Lenny Abrahamson's new film -- it takes place in the present but it looks and feels quite surreal and the balance between comedy and drama is very unusual -- but the journey is well worth taking. My feeling, however, is that it would appeal primarily to viewers who enjoy offbeat indie films. If you don't think that you are one of them, consider renting it first. If you enjoy indie films, then place your order now, as Curzon Film World/Artificial Eye's technical presentation of Frank is flawless. I also encourage you to see the Irish director's previous film, What Richard Did, which won multiple IFTA awards in 2013. Recomemded.

[CSW] -2.2- This is one of those films I would love to be sitting here praising to high heavens. But it's one of those infuriating cases where I think it failed to spark for me, and I actually find it hard to describe why. I guess above all I just found it tonally and narratively flat. Its characters are not interesting enough to allow the drama to really creep under the skin, nor is it funny enough to fully justify its many idiosyncrasies. It aims for a potent mix between comedy and something-close-to-tragedy, but it was a mix it simply did not quite pull off. It doesn't help that the script pretty formulaic despite some surface-level eccentricities. There was little flow to the proceedings in terms of editing which added to an overall sense of unevenness. It remains enjoyable enough in a peculiarly underwhelming sort of way as long as you are somehow expecting it to all tie-together in some meaningful way. But for me, that never happened.
[V5.0-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.

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