The Castle (1994)

 

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Aleksey Balabanov and Sergey Selyanov

Based on a novel by Franz Kafka

Cast: Nikolay Stotskiy as the Land Surveyor; Svetlana Pismichenko as Frida; Anvar Libabov as Helper Arthur; Viktor Sukhorukov as Helper Jeremiah; Igor Shibanov as Brunswick; Andrey Smirnov as the Teacher; Vladislav Demchenko as Varnava; Bolot Beyshenaliev as the Village Senior; Svetlana Svirko as Olga

An Abstract Candidate

 

Long before his crime films, the controversial or confrontation content of his films, Aleksey Balabanov began with films like Happy Days (1991) and this adaptation of the unfinished Franz Kafka novel, which begins with hurdy gurdy music announcing our protagonist played by Nikolay Stotskiy, a land surveyor wandering through the snow. This feels different from later films, yet in itself, it seems not at all different from the worlds of Balabanov's dog-eat-dog gangsters and death, only here it is a period piece and everything has an irrational sense of humour to it.

The land surveyor's fate is pretty much summed up when, in that introduction, he slips on the ice following immediately after by the title credit. Most of The Castle is taken from its source, Kafka's work one of irrational worlds, The Castle taking the simplest premise of a land surveyor in an unknown European world trying to reach the titular castle, only to be constantly be prevented from doing so as he goes. Balabanov's film has its own quirks, and this feels more openly humorous than his later films, even if a very twisted sense of one. Set within an imprecise nation or time, absolutely a period from a century or so earlier, the bureaucracy here from the book feels as much a satire in itself as it is still irrational. His own touches, not expected from a director who would become very nihilistic, is the wackier takes on this world.

Aspects are direct from the source - the land surveyor ends up with two male assistants abruptly provided to him, jokers who seem more inclined to act like prats to the point it seems like they are not sane, possibly sabotaging his progress on purpose but as much likely to be his increasing paranoia. Aspects do have weirdness entirely for Balabanov, where with the aforementioned hurdy gurdy music prominent throughout, he emphasises this as a world of dance and music. Only with special permission, which takes a while, can you play your own waxes of music, and there is someone assigned in the community to make them for the castle, whilst dancing is common place, from maidens attempting the can-can to strange juddering by men in union on stages. These acts seem the only entertainment in general, not just in the pub. Boys, actual choir boys alongside a unisex child choir, are prevalent throughout, possibly with sinister intentions but also because they are a commodity in themselves. Even with the castle, when we eventually enter it, they have a system where members inside can call on a young boy of his choice to come to his room just to sing, even in the midst of a meeting. Considering, when forced to take a test, the land surveyor gets interrogated whilst a choir is on hand to sing in the background, this film's take on music is very important, which also means the sound design and Sergei Kuryokhin's score itself become a prime focus.

The music is compelling in itself, and Sergei Kuryokhin, a former keyboardist for a rock band named Aquarius, was a prolific experimental musician up to his 1996 death as well as a composer for cinema. Since this is a rare moment to talk of him, learning of him for the first time through his work with The Castle and impressed by it, I cannot pass either probably one of his most infamous moments, aptly suitable for this film's tone. Whilst a tangent, it befits the ideas The Castle touches upon, that with a reporter named Sergey Sholokhov, well regarded as a film and theatre critic too, Sholokhov and Kuryokhin created a hoax, during an interview on the television program Pyatoe Koleso (The Fifth Wheel) on 17 January 1991 on Leningrad Television, that Vladimir Lenin consumed psychedelic mushrooms and eventually became one himself. Whilst some immediately presumed it was a joke, this stunt, which was built around an elaborately constructed argument over an hour's worth of programming, a show hosted by Sergey Sholokhov seen as a factually accurate news and cultural show at the time, managed to capture a rare moment in Russia's time period as well as manage to have people believe it was true.  “Lenin was a mushroom” is a phrase that has relevance decades later as a pop cultural phrase, and there is even an account the day after the episode aired, a group of Bolshevik veterans approached an official at the Leningrad Regional Party Committee and demanded to know whether it was true that Lenin had been a mushroom¹.

To get back on tangent, even The Castle itself has its stranger moments even above the intentionally absurdist tone, having not even taking into consideration one of the more broad and sillier running jokes, that at certain periods an alarm will call, and in any building as they all have tiny doors set up within them, a herd of pigs run through in and out. Where the pigs go to and from is never explained, and once it ends, with everyone having to stand out when the alarm goes, the alarm stops and everyone can then sit down. I will not attempt to "read" Kafka. His is a fascinating life internally, complicated knowing he never wanted his work even published originally, and that alongside being released posthumously against his will, The Castle is unfinished, something Aleksey Balabanov goes against by having an actual ending of sorts. The term "Kafkaesque" in this case is a world of illogical and cruel structure against oneself, where for the land surveyor, he cannot as a stranger stay in the inn originally, and no strangers can be in peoples' houses. With the black clothing of many almost puritan, there is a structure of strict law here, which does leave one to also wonder how much of this film as an art house production is a critique of the Soviet Union or touched by it, something which cannot be denied. More so as, whilst there is law, the Castle itself is a vague force, and bureaucracy is the source of power here even if one hand clearly does not know what the other is doing. The land surveyor at one point is informed he was not needed, a mistake of someone still sending a letter out and taking years for confirmation to not have land surveying in the first place.

Notably, and this is where The Castle in this form has an actual ending, whilst there is strict law, you can change identity, one mistake particularly with the land surveyor becoming obsessed with the wife of the wax music maker becoming his folly, as a name can be exchanged for another with ease. Considering the original source novel, for an ending, cuts off at when you finally get into the castle and the protagonist is in the middle of listening to a person of rank inside the fortress, recreated here but continued in original material, does not undercut the source as a travesty. It was an accident of a work never finished, of an author who originally wanted his entire life's work burn by those who knew him, that gained an accidentally great ending by never leading to somewhere. In contrast, Aleksey Balabanov to his credit managed with Sergey Selyanov, more known for producing films including Balabanov's Cargo 200 (2007), to find an ending which does not resolve a thing but leaves at a right point, adding to the irrationality of the world our lead entered. Adding an ending to this narrative was a risk, but it works here, with some hope but also because of this twist emphasising the point of Kafka's work well in itself. His is a world, and in mind to a director here growing up in the Soviet Union, this is a world of forced order where people happily comply with its ill-logic. The only truly sympathetic people the land surveyor finds are Barnabas the professional messenger and his sisters, formerly of a higher standing and viewed as beggars and prostitutes by he rest of the community, the sisters having to be sex workers or try to woo higher ups, even posing as their own siblings, due to one slighting a high ranking official's flirtations being a cause of their downfall in the social pecking order.

Even that the land surveyor is married at one point, to a barmaid who he is caught undressed with, and ends up in a caretaker job at a school, becomes a farce of social norms being illogical, constructs which exist but have no ground in reality. More so with how the modern world is, as throwbacks to conservative views of social structures in family are being fought for, even if at the expense for people's rights and healthy social norms, even logical and empathetic views of society, Kafka's work is unfortunately quite relevant still in the modern day. For me this is becoming more so as his work is about social structures which, presumed holy, are human constructors which distort and are irrational when you stop and consider what they are and how they fail. This can go from The Castle to The Trial (1925), that a man is on trial for a crime he is not even sure he has any connect to let alone committed, and even Amerika (1927), a work set in the USA by a man who never went to the country, and built his own version from research, which still has an unfortunately relevant paranoia in that survival, even in a book started in 1910s, involves having to search for work that is menial and takes a person's whole day to finish for some wages.

A moody film, lit with a dark brown look, The Castle is also very different from what the image of Aleksey Balabanov is for many, unless you were aware of Of Freaks and Men (1998), a film which reflects this film tone, especially in its openly aesthetic touches such as the titular castle being only initially sense in dreams/hazes of the protagonist. Seen as monochrome shots of the castle in the background whilst in the foreground is a bubbling oil-like body of water, the castle is always out of reach even when he someone manages to finally get inside it. Even with a tinge of a happy ending here, it makes sense to have it in context. Barring Barnabas, whose sisters will still try to achieve that illogical thing called status in the castle, that children (at least one boy) are the people who will see how strange this world they live in is is not out of place for Balabanov. If anything, more overtly humorous than his other work, such as the assistances pretending to be horses for a sled, it befits the moments of strangeness of his later films, only with the sense that when he became more commercial with the crime films, Aleksey Balabanov's take on an illogical world became a dog-eat-dog one where the criminal underworld was the only way to survive.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

 

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1) How Vladimir Lenin Became a Mushroom by Eric Grundhauser, published for Atlas Obscura on December 5th 2017. As an additional note, I recommend looking into Sergei Kuryokhin's music, starting with Sparrow Oratorium (1993), the random album of his I looked into just by a few tracks during the writing of this review; just by itself, least beginning with the first track Winter (Зима), presents something truly as unconventional and memorable as The Castle as a film or the Lenin mushroom phenomenon.