Mr. K ★★½

“The trick is to recognise what is important. Miss one detail and the whole concert – ruined!”, laments celebrated artist Ms. Gaga (Sunnyi Melles) in Tallulah Hazekamp Schwab’s sarcastic midnight movie. It’s one of several lines of dialogue that further emphasize the film’s – quite literal – multilayered and multi-stacked metaphors. Overdoing it with these metaphors is one of Schwab’s profound weaknesses. Many of the allegories and symbols are so blatant and head-on that they only obstruct her novellesque nightmare. It revolves around Crispin Glover as beleaguered magician Mr. K (there’s one referential name) who gets stuck in the strange hotel he checked in. Already K’s first night at the hotel is disturbed by unsettling occurrences.

People are hiding in his room for apparently no reason, gurgling noises emanate from the walls, and a scary brass band in Dresden Dolls attire stomps through the hallways. The surreal setting is overpopulated with weird characters, their exalted behavior matching the bizarre surroundings. Once splendid, the hotel is now falling apart, with fir green wallpaper peeling off the endless corridors. The labyrinthine structure proves inescapable when K tries to leave the next morning. Soon he is set to work in the competitive kitchen. Here, his unintentional rise through the ranks makes him envious enemies. Every day the hapless protagonist gets drawn deeper into the abysmal depths of the building. There seems to be no end to the number of rooms, though the house itself keeps shrinking.

With its vigilant one-eyed receptionist, maze-like ground plan and eccentric guests, the claustrophobic place is a cross between The Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’ and The Castle of a certain Czech writer. Allusions to Franz Kafka abound, the most obvious being K’s initial. Equally upfront is the symbolic scenario’s social critique. The hotel serves as a monstrous model of a bureaucratic society where freedom is purely illusional, and everyone kept in their assigned place. Some residents like Ms. Gaga host luxurious feasts in lavish suits, and others like a couple of prim old ladies enjoy never-ending tea parties. Again others like K and his fellow kitchen workers are crammed on bunk beds in overcrowded cabins. And a ragged worker’s family doesn’t even have a room. 

In vain K’s tries to unite the inhabitants who are too busy with their own affairs or simply don’t understand what he tries to tell them: that the whole thing is on the brink of collapse. Despite her visual and dramatic reverence for Kafka, the Norwegian director neither captures the analytical precision of his absurdist allegories nor their haunting paranoia. K’s encounters with the various guests create amusing, visually vibrant sketches, but add little to the entangled storyline. Though K’s position as a kitchen line worker suggests identification with a working-class status, Schwab’s cinematic concept of society is steeped in prejudice and privilege. Seemingly to Schwab, the rich are too decadent for staging a revolt, and the lower classes are too dumb. 

Oppressors and the oppressed are portrayed equally at fault for the system’s failure. Since Schwab suggests the hotel is a visualization of K’s mind, it seems she sees herself as the unlucky protagonist: desperately trying and failing to warn society of impending doom. So it seems fitting that she can’t find a satisfying way out of her Kafkaesque construct. The carnivalesque costumes and various spectacular interiors are an aesthetic delight and the reliable cast – among them Fionnula Flanagan and Bjørn Sundquist – gives their caricature parts some humanity, but excessive style and sarcastic dialogue hide a story of disappointingly little dramatic substance.