Franz Kafka began to work in a novel he referred to as Der Verschollene (the missing man) in 1912. The work was published in 1927, three years after Kafka's death by his friend and amanuensis Max Brod, who did some heavy editing of the manuscript pages and changed the title to Amerika. The book was possibly incomplete, Kafka having stated his intention of adding more chapters. It deals with the travails of 16 year old Karl Rossmann, expelled from his father's house in Germany and sent to America after being seduced by a maid in an encounter that left her pregnant.
The scenario of Karl's adventures is Amerika, a nightmare version of America with enormous, forbidding buildings shown in long lateral dolly shots, monstrous industrial structures with no relation to people, streets either deserted or traversed by grotesque political parades and highways without beginning or end with cars speeding in both directions oblivious of each other. In Amerika, Karl endures numerous setbacks; he falls from grace with his uncle and is betrayed and humiliated time and again by false friends. However, he is also helped by the kindness of various strangers and he never loses his good nature or his desire to help others. Karl ends up finding work in an enormous traveling circus/theater called the Great Theater of Oklahoma and the last scene in the novel shows him watching the landscape from a window of the train that is transporting the entire Theater towards the West.
In spite of its reputation as incomplete, Amerika has a definite ending. The register changes abruptly when Karl applies for a job at the Theater. Conflicts and frustrations disappear, and the Theater (qualified by Kafka as "almost unlimited") has a place for everyone, regardless of abilities. This suggests that the Theater is either Paradise or its earthly introduction. This interpretation is in fact Kafka's own; in conversation with Brod he insinuated that the Theater was Karl's mission, his freedom, his destiny and that he even saw there again, as if by heavenly magic, his parents and his homeland.
Directors Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet have chosen a different, Marxist interpretation. According to them "For Kafka, the law has nothing to do with God, it is the law of classes and the separation of society in classes." Within this framework, Straub and Huillet peculiar direction make sense.and the hero's adventures may be understood in terms of class differences (which explains the title). Actors deliver their lines in a stilted, unnaturally clear diction that somewhat suits the dialogue, where logical constructs are built upon absurd foundations. All in all, the movie delivers a fresh view of the novel. Two objections: the Statue of Liberty in the novel (but not in the movie) wields a sword, not her usual torch and the almost paradisiacal landscape in the last scene of the novel comes out on film as a somewhat dull view of the muddy Missouri River.
