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Only a handful of directors have attempted to adapt Kafka to the screen:Welles with "The Trial" and Haneke with "The Castle" being the two most successful,but this adaptation of his unfinished novel "Amerika" is perhaps the best. "Amerika" was always Kafka's most approachable novel without many of the labyrinthine plots and tortured characters of the other novels and the Straubs certainly approach it with the utmost fidelity. It is the story of Karl Rosmann,a German youth who after getting a servant-girl into trouble is sent by his parents to find work in America.Like the novel,the film proceeds with a series of picaresque episodes recounting his travails first in staying with his wealthy uncle and then finding employment in a large opulent hotel. The Straubs' minimalist style of long takes combined with static camera-work is preserved but the habitually expressionless acting style of their usually non professional cast is here combined with a more declamatory,theatrical style of acting favoured by some of the more experienced members of the cast,notably Laura Betti,and unlike many of their more hermetic film,this can be enjoyed by audiences as a much more straightforward exercise in the pleasures of narrative film-making.
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