Frank

2014 musical odyssey

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy who wants nothing more than to be a pop 'n' roll sensation stumbles his way into a gig as a keyboardist for an experimental rock band after their normal guy tries to drown himself in the ocean. That band is fronted by Frank, a guy who wears and never removes the giant fake head seen on the cover up there. They retreat to the middle of nowhere to record an album and have some differences in opinion about what the band's goals should be.

Man, I loved this movie. I watched most of it and just enjoyed the darkish comedy and good performances--acting and musical. It was quirky, and the band's (Soronprfbs, if you want to try to pronounce that) trip to a remote cabin had enough parallels to Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band's recording of Trout Mask Replica, one of my favorites, to keep me happy. That album, by the way, was produced by none other than Frank Zappa. Soronprbs's musique concrete experimentation and meticulous recording process was, at least for me, fun to watch. And when they began recording? The music's probably not for everybody, but I thought it was downright euphoric!  Gradually, as the protagonist (not really the title character) began to be more and more of an influence, I figured out that this movie is actually about something. And it's a cool little conflict at the center of all of this--the struggle between the desire for popularity and acceptance from an audience and the creativity, passion, and relationships that go into creating something more pure. This also recalled another of my favorite bands--The Residents--and their Theory of Obscurity, the idea that great art can only happen if there is no audience. And although that transformation of Jon from a wide-eyed guy with big dreams to what is pretty close to a villain is pretty jarring, that transformation is what takes this from being nothing more than a quirky comedy to something with a message.

I'm not sure what this is saying about mental illness and the effect of mental illness on art or music. I'm sure it's saying something. Many of the characters have various mental illness, and one of them fucks mannequins. I know mental illness like the ones in this movie probably exist, but they're a little hard to accept all in one setting like this. Of course, as a character early on says, "You're just gonna have to go with it."
 
Michael Fassbender is mostly a voice and enough physicality to make him seem like a cartoon character. I hesitate to call it a good performance, but I suppose it was. I liked the mask and thought it was a lot more expressive than it should have been. I could have sworn that thing changed expressions as the camera hit it from certain angles. I liked Maggie "Stay Away from My Fucking Theremin" Gyllenhaal as his love interest, a psychotic synthesizer and theremin player. She also gets a couple fantastically somber musical numbers--"I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper" and "On Top of Old Smokey"--a little later. She and the other band members all apparently played everything we're hearing in this movie which makes the whole thing even more impressive. These characters are taken through a journey that feels, despite the weirdness of the whole thing, like it could be real, and there's plenty of room in their story to really think about what's going on. It's a well-paced story with plenty of humor and an ending that is just about perfect.