Review: Frank
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
A story about an outsider experimental band told in twee indie-pop shades.
City Paper grade: B-
A story about an outsider experimental band told in twee indie-pop shades, Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank struggles to find a consistent tone. The title character — played by Michael Fassbender under a large, cartoonish papier-mâché head — leads a band of eccentrics with an unpronounceable name who labor over songs that are rarely heard by miniscule audiences at sporadic gigs which inevitably end in meltdown.
Into this dysfunctionally creative camp wanders Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), a young would-be songwriter with more aspiration than inspiration. Received with suspicion by the rest of the band — especially the perpetually distrustful keyboardist, Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) — Jon attempts to shape Frank’s offbeat songs into something more listener-friendly and to nudge the reclusive singer-songwriter into something more resembling a career than a cult. Jon’s YouTube diaries of the band’s protracted, isolated recording sessions become a viral sensation and lead to a potentially disastrous gig at South by Southwest. The look of Frank is modeled on Frank Sidebottom, the similarly masked alter ego of British musician and comedian Chris Sievey. Co-screenwriter Jon Ronson played keyboards for Sidebottom for a stint in the ’90s, and partly based the film on his experiences. But Sidebottom was clearly a comedic character, whereas the film’s Frank is a disturbed soul who hides under the mask and refuses to reveal his actual identity. The character is drawn more from Daniel Johnston, where the bizarre band boot-camp is directly inspired by the infamous recording sessions for Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica.
Gleeson begins the film wandering his neighborhood, composing insipid ditties narrating whatever scenes he chances upon. His experiences with the band contrast Jon’s ambitions with Frank’s off-kilter inventiveness, which inevitably collide once Jon begins seeing the oddball singer as a marketing gimmick rather than a human being with real issues. But Abrahamson, as well as the script by Ronson and Peter Straughan, can’t seem to decide whether Frank is a misunderstood genius or a charismatic crackpot, so the film veers erratically between empathy and ridicule. It’s admirably low-key when dealing with interpersonal band dynamics, but tends to become broad and jeering whenever its scope expands, as if mocking its weird friends when the cool kids are around.
