Franz Kafka died without finishing the book but that makes no difference; the story is never-ending. The whole story is about the efforts of a professional man, who has been hired to work in the castle, to actually get in. The bureaucracy in the adjacent village must be dealt with before he can enter but it is wholly without any ambition to succeed at anything. This is an essay on futility and frustration but it is totally engrossing. The film is similar in nature to Johnny Depp's Dead Man, except that he is faced with anarchy rather than bureaucracy.
Review of The Castle
