Frank

Rating: 7/10 (23 October 2014)

I saw the poster and I recognised the iconic image of the man wearing a large round head with black hair and big blue eyes, possibly from somewhere in childhood, so I was most interested to see a film where this was the big draw. Basically Jon Burroughs (About Time's Domhnall Gleeson, Brendan's son) is a young man is a wannabe musician, he wants to get into the music industry, but struggles a little to write his own original material on his keyboard. He gets lucky with a band needing a replacement keyboard player, playing a few chords, this eccentric band is called "Soronprfbs", led by the mysterious and enigmatic Frank (Michael Fassbender), Frank is always seen wearing his trademark large papier-mâché spheroidal head, and he never takes it off, even to eat, drink, wash or sleep. Jon joins the band as they travel to Ireland to rehearse and find their unique sound to record a new album, Jon posts many comments on Twitter and videos on the internet of his experiences, the band's rehearsal sessions and his thoughts and feelings, and eventually he does find himself able to compose new music on the keyboard, but Frank does not use this material, he takes elements of it to create the music he wants for the band. The band finally start recording an album, but tension emerges between members, not just with Jon who feels somewhat shunned with his original music, but also with often aggressive theremin player Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who loves Frank, but the relationship is hard while he wears his head all the time. Towards the end, despite a following on social media, Jon finally loses his way and drops out of the band, and Frank is hit by a car which ruins the large head he wears, Frank reveals his true face to his band members in a bar, with Jon returning to look onwards, slowly Frank starts to sing and the band play along, they seem to reconcile, while Jon smiles and eventually walks away to find his own path in life. Also starring Scoot McNairy as band manager Don, Carla Azar as band drummer Nana, François Civil as French bassist Baraque, Lauren Poole as Alice, Hayley Derryberry as Simone, Paul Butterworth as Jon's Father, Moira Brooker as Jon's Mother, Tess Harper as Frank's Mom, Bruce McIntosh as Frank's Dad and Mark Huberman as Management Guru. Gleeson gives a finely tunes performance as the young musician falling into a nutty gang, Gyllenhaal is interesting as she snarls and is mostly antisocial, and unseen throughout most of the film Fassbender is fascinating as the title character expressing himself through bodily expressionism, words and of course music. The story is inspired by the experiences of writer Jon Ronson, the real keyboardist of the band, the real Frank was cult entertainer Frank Sidebottom, the creation of musician and comic Chris Sievey (who died in 2010), the story is not a biopic or biographical, it takes the large papier-mâché spheroidal head as a starting point and creates a fictional full of suitably understated laughs and alternative art, the songs are most interesting throughout as well, especially the final song "I Love You All" sung by both Fassbender and The Soronprfbs, this is a most watchable comedy drama. Very good!