Frank (2014)

We've all been living under the guise that Gonzo died when Hunter S Thompson did, or likely well before that, when actually it just migrated over to film, where no one seems to care what's real and what's not anymore. Take Frank: the title character inspired by the real life papier mache headed alter ego of comedian and singer Chris Sievey, who from 1984 til his death wore the head more often than not. One of the film's writers, Jon Ronson, toured with the real Frank, although the real man seems to be only an influence on the movie - other real life stories like Captain Beefheart's infamous recording sessions of Trout Mask Replica are mixed in, the story is updated to modern day, and things end up more dramatic and romantic than I imagine anything life would allow.

Domhnall Gleeson plays Jon, an amateur keyboardist who lucks out on landing a job in Frank's band. He packs up and moves with the band to a remote lodge in the countryside of Ireland while the band record their album - a claustrophobic recording session that goes way over schedule.  Jon doesn't fit easily into the band: like any musician who's only ever imagined himself on stage, he finds reality an anti-climax. Another bandmate, Don, hangs over Jon as a a reminder of what he doesn't want to end up as: a backup musician, his music never good enough to take the spotlight, forced to the background of his own life. Frank, more than anything, is about an artist who can't accept he sucks; everyone who's ever wanted the creative lifestyle knows the itch to be truly great at something, and the pain of not being good enough, of not being Frank. In one scene Jon says how he wishes he had had a troubled childhood - I know many won't understand this line, although anyone who's ever put up posters of Kurt Cobain or Jimi Hendrix on their walls and knew what those walls now said about them will. It's easier to chalk other people's talent up to their tortured lives and troubles. Thing is, it's all a myth. Even with the head off, Frank has real talent, the talent that Jon longs for. Frank is as much a story of Jon accepting this as about the curiosity of watching a man who refuses to take his head off.

Michael Fassbender is great as Frank. It's one of the "in things" in acting right now to praise performances that impair the actor in some way. Like Tom Hardy's emotion hiding mask all through The Dark Knight Rises, or single person films like Locke and Buried. It's becoming a cliche to see people going crazy over performances because they were a challenge for the actor, regardless of whether they were good or not. Fassbender's Frank still doesn't feel like a gimmick though; his natural charisma comes through even from behind the papier mache, and he manages to suppress it to show a much darker human being when the mask comes off.

The premise alone made me think the filmmakers had found a quirk mine of a character and Frank would end up a film about a lovable weirdo, but the film arrives at a much darker place than that. The characters travel to America for a big gig and the film changes to something else, it becomes a film about all the things artists think about but wish they didn't. The line between selling out and becoming more "likable" as Frank puts it. If all music is for an audience or if, sometimes, it's for no one more than the people it's made by. If the torture of every "tortured artist" is really where the magic springs from, or if they're the rare lucky ones who've made it despite their problems. The film talks about these things, as all films can talk, in such simple terms. I wouldn't imagine everyone would understand the appeal of this film, the same way many people would consider wishing you had a troubled childhood a weird thing to do, and not a bad thought pattern you have to work your way out of. Frank is a film more for people who, at least at their lowest moments, could see the benefits of living inside a papier mache head.

The real Frank