Frank

 Frank is a curious film (not a cutesy-quirky one, thank goodness) about an idiosyncratic band fronted by a man who performs, writes, and lives inside a giant papier-mache head. The great Michael Fassbender brings his usual level of commitment to the titular role and is able to create a convincing and engaging character despite being encased in a bulbous, unexpressive, mask. Domhnall Gleeson plays Jon, a wannabe songwriter living with his folks in Dublin, who, by a fluke, becomes the new keyboard player of Frank’s band, Soronprfb. Though Jon has little talent, he optimistically believes that Frank could be a big star, and help him achieve his own rock-n-role dreams. For the first half of the film, we see Frank and his band as they go through their prolonged process of producing a new record. Gleeson functions much like the kid in Jon Favreau’s Chef, recording the proceedings as they develop and tweeting them out to the world. When they get a decent amount of followers, Jon convinces Frank to take the band to the SXSW music festival, where the second, darker half of the picture takes place. 

There is a lot that works about Frank. It’s an intriguing film that doesn’t settle for the kind of easy, offbeat humor that used to fuel the Sundance Festival. This is a melancholy drama that touches on many rich themes about madness--how it contributes to art, identity, fame, love, friendship, etc. Yet too much of the film is played for surface whimsy rather than deep exploration of its subject. It feels like director Lenny Abrahamson (Adam & Paul, Garage, What Richard Did) wants to preserve so much of the mystery of his title character, and the audience’s initial bewilderment at seeing him, that he’s content to have us just observe Frank and speculate about him, as Jon does. This choice would be fine if we also got a real sense of Frank’s genius. As it is, we don’t hear much of his music until the end, so we don’t have a clear understanding of what makes Frank special besides his most obvious, external eccentricity. Does his madness enable a true artistic gift, or is he just an oddity? If we heard more of his music and got a feeling of what he experiences while performing it, this might have been a fascinating film. As it is, we get only a small glimpse that, for me anyway, isn’t enough to bring together all the threads and ideas the film sets up. 

The story is inspired by Chris Sievey, a shy musician in the 1980’s British punk scene who performed under the stage name Frank Sidebottom and wore a giant head for shows, interviews, and even off-stage. Screenwriter Jon Ronson was the keyboard player in Sievey’s band the Freshies and, presumably, got to know the real life Frank well. His decision to write a fiction film rather than a biopic is smart, as the Frank of this film becomes a surrogate for all artists who are fascinating at least in part because they are touched by madness--from rockers like Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett, and Captain Beefheart to actors like Klaus Kinski and Crispin Glover. But, since Ronson was so close to the genuine article, I wish he had a little more insight to give us into the mind of a mad genius. We already know what it’s like to view one from a removed distance.