The Castle

A stark and unsettling adaptation of Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel of the same name, The Castle follows K. (Ulrich Mühe from The Lives of Others, and Funny Games), a land surveyor summoned to a remote village governed by a mysterious and impenetrable bureaucracy housed in a forbidding castle. Upon arrival, K. discovers that his services are no longer needed, or perhaps never were. Unable to persuade the locals of his legitimacy, K. finds himself sucked into a bizarre spiral of provincial bureaucracy and petty rivalries that soon becomes a surreal, all-encompassing nightmare. With deliberate pacing and minimal score, the film emphasises the futility of K.’s efforts to gain access to the Castle or even clarity about his situation. Interactions with local officials yield no resolution, only deeper entrapment in a labyrinth of meaningless protocol. The Castle becomes a powerful meditation on authority, isolation, and the human desire for recognition within systems designed to obscure and reject. It is both faithful to its source and distinctly Haneke: bleak, cerebral, and unflinching.