“Frank” (8.5 out of 10) – Directed by Leonard Abrahamson; Written by Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan; Based on “Oh Blimey” by Jon Ronson; Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Scoot McNairy, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Michael Fassbender; Rated R.
Every year during Sundance I review the list of movies, not because I’m ever able to attend many, but to make a mental list of the things I want to seek out when they’re available later. One film that stuck out in last year’s listing was “Frank,” the tale of an experimental rock band whose front man wears an oversized paper mache head. So when Kill-tacular-tron told me it was streaming, it just had to be this week’s Netflix Pick.
Though Frank (Fassbender) is the titular character and center of the universe around which the other characters orbit, the story actually follows Jon Burroughs (Gleeson) an unhappy office worker and amateur keyboard player who stumbles into life as an aspiring musician.
At the start of the film Jon comes across a man attempting to drown himself while a scattering of people look on and rescuers do their best to prevent him from succeeding. As the man is taken to the ambulance Jon has a conversation with Don, an onlooker and associate of the attempted drowning victim. Don mentions that the man was the keyboardist for a band that he manages and they have a show that evening now sans keyboardist.
Jon mentions that he plays keyboard and is hired for the gig after assuring Don he is capable of playing C, F, and G. When he arrives he is introduced to the band who begrudgingly accept him, and Frank complete with giant paper head who is singularly excited to have Jon on board.
While the movie is based on actual events, the connection between the film’s narrative and the real story of Frank Sidebottom is tenuous at best. Jon Ronson, who co-wrote the film’s screenplay, really did play keyboard for Frank and his interview did consist of “Can you play C, F, and G?” and while it seems that the spirit of Frank Sidebottom has been preserved in the film, many of the events and the details of Frank’s life have been fictionalized and all of the music is original and recorded by the cast. Look at it as a romanticized retelling of true history, you know, like the rest of history.
After Jon’s gig with the perpetually unpronounceable Soronprfbs, he is invited on what he believes to be a weekend excursion with the band that is in actuality an indefinite recording session at a remote cabin. Despite friction between himself and Clara (Gyllenhaal), a brooding theremin player and borderline psychopath, and his being wholly underprepared and under talented, Jon uses his savings to finance the band’s existence for the next year while they recorded and worshiped at the feet of Frank.
The presence of the mask forces Frank to literally see the world through different eyes and the rest of the band, because of his innate musical ability and his eccentricities, treat him almost prophetically as best represented by a scene between Jon and Don.
“Sooner or later you’re going to get the feeling ‘Why can’t I be Frank?’ or ‘Maybe I can be Frank.’ But, Jon, there can only be one Frank. One.”
Don’s disappointment with his station in life as compared to Frank crystallizes in a later scene while Jon continues his efforts to make the band, and by extension himself, as popular as possible.
What struck me as most compelling when watching “Frank” was the way it put a magnifying glass over our love affair with mental illness. While efforts at education about mental illness have seemingly increased in recent years there’s no denying that we love it. I’m not talking about reality television, which is as pervasive as ever and succeeds almost entirely by putting horrible characters in front of us who we can judge from a distance, or that millions watched in awe at the destructive spirals of Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus. These are mostly modern incarnations of a long term behavior.
While Jon is blogging his experiences he types the words, “I’ve come to realize that this is my Bluff, Kansas. That here in Vetno I have found my abusive childhood, my mental hospital, that which pushes me to go to my furthest corners.” He’s referencing events that he believes to be behind Frank’s talent and that belief extends to the real world. Vincent van Gogh was perhaps the greatest painter of all time and his work cannot be divorced from his mental illness. Sylvia Plath, a celebrated poet, struggled with mental illness and lost. In fact, mental illness is so common in poets and artists that they named the effect after Plath. There appears to be some evidence of a correlation between artistic ability/ambition and mental illness the causes of which are still up for debate. But the idea has entered the human consciousness, we revere those who are tortured and turn their pain into something beautiful and in some cases, we court that situation for ourselves, to hell with the consequences.
The film explores all of these ideas and keeps you captivated along the way. The performances of the primary cast all hit the mark. Gyllanhaal exudes menace, Gleeson is well meaning but naïve, McNairy is loyal but broken, and Fassbender’s Frank is obviously tortured yet surprisingly enlightened.
At the end I was a little sad that Frank and the Soronprfbs don’t actually exist. Like I said, a story like this is attractive. There’s something gravitational about a broken mind that makes art, I’m not immune to it. So I was happy to see them perform on “The Colbert Report” if only to see what it would have been like.
So what do we do with this information now that we have it. How do we marry our desire to fight mental illness and our love of art. It seems clear that to remove mental anguish is to extinguish at least some of the fire that brings us so much joy. So what do we do? I don’t know, we make movies about it I guess.