According to IMDb, Frank has acquired North American theatrical distribution through Magnolia Pictures after playing both Sundance and SxSW.
All I knew about Frank going in was buzz I heard on Twitter after its Sundance screening, and that included the fact that the movie featured Michael Fassbender in a giant fake head for the duration of the film. That was all I needed.
Jon (Domnhall Gleeson) is our narrator on this musical comedy odyssey and his biggest problem in life is that he’s a pretty terrible musician. When he stumbles across a touring band whose keyboardist is attempting to drown himself, the opportunity to pursue his musical dream and leave his boring corporate life behind is too tempting to resist. The comically named Soronprfbs are a band full of insanely talented musicians with an emphasis on insane. The heart and soul of the band is the titular Frank, he of the giant fake head. Frank is kind, gifted, and the extremely fragile glue that holds the band together. Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is an angry theremin-player who is fiercely protective of Frank, and hates Jon’s guts from first breath. Scoot McNairy rounds out the main characters of the Soronprfbs as the chronic mannequin-screwer Don, and there are also some French musicians who say little but play drums and bass like champs.
Jon is excited to play a weekend gig with the band but when Don informs him that they’ll be staying at the unique little house in the Irish country side for the duration of the recording of their next album, he is only too willing to say goodbye to his former life and surrender to Frank and his eccentricity as they record and jam together for months on end.
The film is apparently based on a magazine article written by Jon Ronson, who also co-wrote the script with Pater Straughan. That article detailed the real life inspiration behind Frank, Chris Sievey. This artist and the article about him were completely unknown to me so I found the film to be fresh and pleasantly weird. Director Lenny Abrahamson manages to coax a lot of hilarity from this story while never throwing any of his characters under the bus. Frank has a difficult tonal balance to maintain, and Abrahamson trods it deftly.
This is a quirky little exploration of the thin line between creativity and insanity. There’s some meaningful drama, some laugh out loud comedy, and overall a wholly unique experience of music, art, and insanity… oh, and South By Southwest.
Jon tweets his way through the bands recording process unbeknownst to his bandmates and as their notoriety swells on the web, he finds them a spot at Austin’s own world famous music festival… from which I am currently writing this review. As Jarrod Neece, a lead programmer of SXSW Film noted… watching Frank here was a meta experience.
The laughs in Frank are frequent and begin right away as Jon attempts to find inspiration by “live singing” various boring things he is seeing as he walks down the street of his boring town. Even his tweets are boring, “Hashtag nomnomnom”. Then once Frank and Don are introduced, their insanity is played for laughs in a way that could be off-putting for some, but for the most part Jon is totally taken by them and as an audience we fall in love with them too. It is clear that their eccentricities result in incredible art as the music in the film is simply excellent to this non-cultured music listener. And apparently the actors all played their own instruments and the audio recorded in the film is live as well. I’d suggest this is a major selling point of the film overall as the music is a wonderful expression of the band’s quirkiness and passion.
I’d love to delve into some of the deeper themes the film explores but I run a risk of spoiling things that should not be spoiled. Let’s just say that the handling of social media in the film feels very important. And if I am reading things right, the film ends up being a bit of an indictment of our mutual technological overexposure. It also explores the delicate balance between indulging a mentally ill person their fantasies versus forcing them to confront behavior that may be holding them back from entirely healing.
Fassbender does an admirable job in what must have been a wildly limiting role in which his entire head is covered by the mask. I was tempted, during the post-screening Q and A, to ask if it was really Michael Fassbender under the head for the entirety of the film, but I’d be willing to guess that it really, truly is him throughout. It is a very different role from any I have seen from him in my memory, and certainly lends him some cred as a musician, which kind of makes me hate him even more… how did this guy get all the muti-disciplined talent AND the good looks? Donmhall Gleeson (who has appeared in way more movies than I’d have guess since I thought I’d never seen him before: Dredd, True Grit, some Harry Potters) also does a great job playing an ambiguous character who we want to root for as an audience but who ultimately causes a lot of the conflict through his seemingly innocent actions and naiveté. Maggie Gyllenhaal is positively frightening as the fierce and firey Clara, and Scoot McNairy adds another excellent character part to his repertoire as well.
Frank won’t be among the most stand out films of South By Southwest 2014 for me, but I certainly found myself charmed and amused by it, and felt that the screenplay effectively invested me in this crazy little band and drew out the desired emotional response from me at the conclusion of it all. The weirdness on display will likely limit the appeal of Frank to an art house audience, but it ultimately tells a pretty traditional narrative of talent flirting with insanity and authentic relationships being the truest power to overcome our issues.
And I’m Out.