Gloomy tale of music and mental issues

Rating: 7/10 (24 August 2014)

The movie focuses on Jon, a young musician with no band and still lacking good song material. One day by accident Jon meets an indie band on a beach as they are left with an open slot for a keyboard player. Jon volunteers to join and on stage Jon sees first time the complete band, including the eccentric front man Frank who wears a fake head and never taking it off. Sometime later Frank calls Jon to join the band and go with them some place in the woods. They record their album there for a year. There Jon's position in the band slowly rises as he gets closer to Frank. He begins to win Frank's heart and, as the band obeys Frank, thus the band's direction. After the album does done, Jon reveals he had been publishing clips of the band on YouTube without the others know. They hate him for it, but he wins Frank's heart as he shows them the many views.
They go to the USA to play on SXSW. It's shown that Frank had some past mental issue. Seeing the possible crowd multitude and their effect on Frank, the others ask Jon to cancel the gig. Jon persisted and, as Frank sides with him, the other band members split. But Frank gets a mental episode and their gig fails. Impatient, Jon demands Frank to take off the fake head. As Jon fails to force him, Frank runs away from Jon but his fake head is smashed. After sometime searching, Jon finds Frank, in his parents' home without any fake head. He apologizes to Frank but the aura is lame between them when Jon leaves. Jon finds the other band members playing live music in some deserted tavern. The movie ends with the band getting together again and jamming to Frank's lead, with Jon only watching.
The story rolls out all too like any indie spirited movie, with the constant gloomy lonesome mood. The pace is at the slightly slowed down speed, perfect in combination of the mood and the normal take on photography. It's nice to see that the story unveils perfectly over the course of only ninety minutes or so duration. Although it's quite regrettable that being a movie with somewhat strong mystery genre aura, Frank (2014) doesn't offer any surprising plot line or twist. It goes all too predictable.
One mentionable thing is the music indeed. The music in Frank (2014) is indeed a not rare find amongst indie musicians, incorporating a lot of electronic sound modification and samplings. Done in a grunge and britpop mix, the songs don't necessarily offer great vocals. What makes the music different is that the lyrics and melodies are very catchy.
The acting is indeed more than a decent performance. Domhnall Gleeson did a decent job in maintaining the role of the story teller focus character although the story focuses on Fassbender's character. Having big senior names such as Maggie Gyllenhaal and Scott McNairy is nice in boosting attention and awareness as well attracting viewers for this movie. Seeing Michael Fassbender act without actually seeing his face up until late into the movie is indeed a nice new experience. This concept has been done before, but again it feels quite different due to Michael Fassbender is the one doing it.
My final say for Frank (2014) is a score of 7 out of 10. A recommendation is only for those of you are real life musicians or music enthusiasts, or those who have high patience to wait until the story gets interesting.