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| via Ryan Gajda |
Most movies that get made about a rock band follow the same typical formula: the band gets together, they hit it big, and then that success breeds personal demons that tear them apart right at the moment when they achieve what was supposed to be their dream. Frank, which comes to us from director Lenny Abrahamson and a script by Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan (The Men Who Stare at Goats), subverts that formula. Instead, it looks at a young band whose members are already consumed and defined by their personal demons, even before they achieve any sort of notoriety, which makes for a story that’s far more madcap, and ultimately bittersweet, than any of those rise-and-fall rock-and-roll stories of substance abuse and excess. Frank starts at the point where most of these movies end, so it ends up being able to take us someplace we’ve never before been.
The eccentric band who serve as the protagonists, an experimental number called Soronprfbs, are made up of new keyboardist Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), who is the most mundane of the group, and who serves as the eyes through which we discover their world, a consistently exasperated and painfully French guitarist named Baraque (François Civil), a silent but soulful drummer named Nana (Carla Azar), an intense taskmistress who plays the theremin named Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Don (Scoot McNairy), who is the mannequin-molesting lieutenant to the band’s lead singer, and said lead singer, Frank (Michael Fassbender), who obsessively wears a giant, creepy, expressionless fake head every moment of every day, and refuses to take it off. That’s an eccentric cast of characters brought to life by a charismatic cast of performers, and the ways in which they alternately bump up against each other and come together over the course of the film are a large part of what makes Frank such an entertaining movie. It’s filled with chaos and humor, and it even manages to be touching a time or two.
All of that is true of a lot of indie ensemble films though. Chances are, what’s really going to make Frank stand out to audiences is the gimmick of the guy who refuses to ever take off his giant fake head. Apparently, the germ of that idea came from a man who Ronson was really in a band with back when he was young, named Frank Sidebottom, who really did wear a giant fake head every time they performed (though by all accounts was less obsessive about keeping it on during private moments than the fictional Frank). Whether it’s because of the insight that those experiences gave Ronson, or just the quality of the work he and Straughan did on the script, the fake-headed lead singer gimmick here manages to work like gangbusters. It’s an odd enough concept to be consistently visually entertaining, but the filmmakers understand Frank enough as a character that they’re always able to keep him grounded and authentic, which means that the film built up around him is always able to maintain a dramatic edge that never slips into being mere farce.
The other big reason film fans are going to flock to see Frank is the actor who was chosen to don the big, silly mask, Michael Fassbender. Not only is Fassbender one of the most rapidly rising stars in movies both mainstream and art house, he’s also a performer whose fame has come largely due to his charm, his looks, and his expressive eyes and smile. What happens when you take all of those assets and bury them under a giant, statically expressive cartoon head? Would there be any of the Fassbender we know and love left? These are questions that people want answered.
The answers are, of course, yes. Even under that big head, Fassbender still manages to make Frank the engaging and enigmatic heart of this film—though he’s certainly helped out by the script he’s working with, which never just paints the character as being a mystery or an eccentric. Instead, he’s a three-dimensional person who you believe exists every second he’s on screen, who you believe must have some sort of mental illness at the center of his actions. Said actions are never painted as being ironic or just emptily eccentric, either. Frank never becomes a representation of mental illness. This isn’t the sort of movie where someone gets figured out, or where someone learns to cope with something. It’s far too messy and too real to have a cut-and-dried dramatic arc like that. Instead, what you get is a simple, slice-of-life character study with a good dose of destructive behavior thrown on top of it to give everything some added kick.
Seeing as this is a movie about a band, Fassbender’s isn’t the only performance that’s important to the film’s success—it’s just the one that demands the most attention (typical lead singer). Everyone else brings a heck of a lot to their roles as well. Gleeson is so inherently likable and relatable that you never stop feeling for his character, even when he’s being pathetic. Gyllenhaal is such a commanding presence that you believe in every threat her fascist, control-freak character makes. McNairy probably steals the film as its most perverse and nihilistic character. There are a few moments in the film where he makes a ridiculous statement followed by a jester’s grin that are sublime comedy, and he pulls them off all while maintaining a vague sadness in his eyes that hints at the lingering effects of past traumas. Funny and sad at the same time—that’s basically the hallmark of Frank.
Complexity and ambiguity seeps into every character, to the point where it even affects the perspective from which we watch the story. Gleeson’s Jon is kind of the protagonist by default, seeing as he’s the first character who we meet and it’s his eyes through which we meet the others, but he’s still not someone we can root for. He’s kind of a putz who has delusions of grandeur—a fact which the places the film takes him by the end makes even more evident. In most movies that would be a problem, but a film full of this many personalities doesn’t require you to like the protagonist. Also, our concerns about him are constantly voiced by one of the other characters, Gyllenhaal’s Clara, who views him as a talentless interloper, but so constantly and violently that you can’t really root for her either. There’s no hero here, but everyone is so interesting and so broken that the thing you come to root for is their very survival, which proves to be enough to keep you engaged while their story plays out.
Once you get past all of the eccentricities, chaos, and gimmickry, the real reason Frank is one of the best movies of the year so far is all of the things it manages to say about art and the creative process. Though it subverts the usual rock movie formula, it still manages to provide the viewer with plenty of deep thoughts to mull over in regards to the music business. It has a lot to say about the dichotomy that exists between creating art as therapy and creating art as a livelihood. It asks the question of whether or not a happy medium can be found between those two approaches, or if it’s possible to commit to one without being consumed by its demands. Is the artistic process a healing exercise or a destructive one that’s destined to destroy the creator? All of this high-minded stuff and you still get to watch Michael Fassbender running around and acting silly while wearing a goofy-looking fake head—that’s what I call a movie.
