Director: Michael Haneke
Script: Michael Haneke
Based on the novel "Das Schloss" by Franz Kafka
Photography: Jiri Stibr
Editor: Andrea Prochaska
Production Design: Christoph Kanter
Principal Cast: Ulrich Mühe, Susanne Lothar, Frank Giering, Felix Eitner
Producer: Veit Heiduschka, Christina Undritz
Production: Bayerischer Rundfunk, Wega Film, Arte, Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF)
Distribution: WEGA-Filmproduktionsgesellschaft mbH
Claudia Pollok
Tel.: 0043 1 982 57 42
Fax: 0043 1 982 58 33
office@wega-film.at
Haneke’s 1997 adaptation of Kafka’s “Das Schloss” (“The Castle”) was his first cooperation with married couple Ulrich Mühe and Susanne Lothar, who later played the lead roles in “Funny Games” as well. Haneke creates a diffuse, Kafkaesque environment, and sends his protagonists into the thick of it. In the course of the film, they probe ever deeper into the nocturnal aspects of their subconscious. Mühe and Lothar give the world devised by Kafka a face, but do not render everything explicit. With support from Haneke’s direction, their characters are living through an indeterminable fear and a horror of their own creation. Carrying the characteristically vague mood prevalent in the works of Franz Kafka over into an adaptation is by and large a presumptuous endeavor. Haneke, however, succeeds in his attempt. “Das Schloss” is considered one of the few films truly deserving to be called a film version of a literary work.