Frank

Frank, Lenny Abrahamson

The classification for Frank says comedy. But for me it runs as pure pathos. On paper Lenny Abrahamson’s work, Frank, loosely based on the life of Frank Sidebottom (the comic persona of musician Chris Sievey) would probably not merit a second glance yet to do so would be a huge miss. I plane watched Frank – on an eight hour trip to Boston and thank you to British Airways for including it in your film choice. I had read one review and I was very curious to see how a film about a rock band where the lead singer spends all his time encased in a giant papier-mâché head can work. Add in the irony that the actor playing the disguised Frank is Michael Fassbinder and it becomes even harder to predict.

On one level it’s a story of how you can tweet yourself to having a cult following even though you have never really performed in front of an audience. It’s the parallel of hiding yourself and being more intriguing to a potential audience – shades of Daft Punk? But on another level it’s a film which poses more questions than providing resolutions making it a rewarding and stimulating work.

It’s a story of UK suburban wannabe musician,Jon, played by Domhall Gleeson who has a chance meeting with a weird and unconventional rock group fronted by Frank (Michael Fassbender).
They disappear to Ireland to work on an album which, due to Frank being a perfectionist, never really seems to come to fruition. However on the way there are many interesting observations.
Frank is musically talented – he could probably write a hit, a la David Bowie as legend goes, in ten minutes over a cup of coffee but he chooses not to, in the same way he chooses to shield himself in a giant head away from scrutiny or judgment. Frank actually takes it a stage further by dictating that the band reach out to all their outer corners to unleash some creative cacophony Which resembles the nerve racking sound of chalk on a blackboard. Is this all done for laughs or is Abrahamson exploring the inner workings of a dark creative soul? Is Gleeson playing alter ego to the trapped or hidden talent of Fassbender’s Frank or is it the other way round? Gleeson cuts himself shaving and Fassbender wears a bandage in sympathy. There are some funny scenes which include Gleeson’s inability to understand even basic school boy French sprouted by fellow band member and more notably, when there is a ceremony for mannequin loving Don, please look out for the vase. Yet I can’t get away from the inherent serious undertones of the film which depicts all of the characters revolving round some form of mental torment and, in some cases, outright mental illness. Are we back to the old adage about misunderstood creativity ending in madness or sorrow? Suicidal tendencies run riot and the film evokes memories of Joy Division and their troubled frontman, Ian Curtis.

Frank provides a challenging role for Fassbender. After all film is a visual art and by taking an actor, all be it an accomplished one, and giving him a semi fixed gaze resembling Joe Ninety with dark hair, the bar is raised and the rules of the game have been changed. Yet he delivers and he delivers it all: comedy, surprise, dominance, sadness and doom and all without an actor’s normal tool of facial expression. Fassbender is a helped in his journey through his co stars, Maggie Gyllenhaal as the quasi sadistic Clara and Scoot McNairy as Don and of course by Gleeson who, in his pairing with Fassbender, helps create an illusion of two personalities becoming interchangeable.

The film ends where it starts with similar suburban scenes yet poised on opposite sides of the Atlantic. But in-between there’s a lot to think about and my eyes were fixed to that small airplane screen for every one of those 95 minutes.