Frank (Magnolia Pictures, R)

If you’re willing to suspend your critical faculties and allow yourself to enter the world of this film, it can prove to be quite a rewarding experience.

 

 

 

 

One essential strategy for surviving in a media-saturated world is to ignore most of what’s out there, and then catch up as necessary, on a strict need-to-know basis. To take a currently relevant example, until I heard Mark Kermode discussing Frank Sidebottom during his weekly podcast, I had no idea that Sidebottom existed, was an altar ego of the English musician and comedian Chris Sievey, and bore the identifying characteristic of an enormous plaster head.

Fortunately, you don’t need to know anything about Sievey or Sidebottom to enjoy Frank, in which Michael Fassbender, playing the titular character, is never seen without an enormous, expressionless plaster head. Fassbender’s Frank is the leader of a rock band who thinks very well of themselves and are sure they are exploring fruitful new sonic territory, although whether that opinion has any basis in fact is left an open question. Other members of the band include a remarkably hostile theremin player (Maggie Gyllenhaal), an aloof bass player (Francois Civil), a bizarre drummer (Carla Azar), and a seriously burned out band manager (Scoot McNairy).

The band did have a keyboard player as well, but when we first met this individual, he was trying to drown himself in the ocean. As they have a gig that night, the band needs an immediate replacement, and the apparently normal but remarkably untalented Jon (Domhnall Gleeson, who played Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter movies) happens to be handy, so he becomes their new keyboard player. The film has some fun with Jon’s failures as a songwriter, but he seems to be an OK guy and a passable keyboard player. He also serves the important function of acting as the audience representative and guide through the crazy world of Frank’s band, Soronprfbs (it’s meant to be unpronounceable, presumably as an expression of how little the band is interested in communicating with the outside world).

Jon accompanies the band to a rural cabin where he believes they will spend the weekend recording an album (he has a day job to which he plans to return). However, time seems to have a different meaning for the band members than it does for Jon, and they show much less interest in actually laying down some tracks than they do in proclaiming just about anything Frank does as genius.

Part of the success of Frank depends on the Hello Kitty effect: Just as the mouthless Kitty feels like you feel, so the unchanging expression of the plaster head that is Frank’s primary feature can reflect whatever feeling you ascribe to it. Frank’s plaster head functions like a Magic Eight Ball that always produces the same answer and thus forces you to interpret it in terms of your own current feelings and desires.

Frank is at its best when focusing on the band members’ attempts to fly up their own collective asses—and whether you find them inspired, ridiculous, or a little bit of both depends at least as much on your assumptions as on any indications provided by director Lenny Abrahamson—and loses its way when they leave their hermetic retreat for the real world of SXSW and audiences who might not be on the same refined wavelength as themselves (or be interested in supplying the kind of unlimited positive regard the band has come to expect).

For all that, the real point of Frank has nothing to do with music and everything to do with the way the band members interact with each other. If you’re willing to suspend your critical faculties and allow yourself to enter the world of this film, it can prove to be quite a rewarding experience. | Sarah Boslaugh