“Gregor’s father, with shaking hands, tottered to his chair, and slumped down into it: it looked as though he were settling to his regular evening snooze, but the powerful nodding of his somehow disconnected head showed that he was very far from sleeping.”

In 2012 there was a short film released that was supposed to be a modern day adaptation of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” the film even goes by the same title. However, there are stark differences between the two as the director had a very different interpretation of the source material. The film is less than fifteen minutes long which leaves it little ground to cover, but there’s still enough time there to convey a message similar to how Kafka had many different themes interwoven throughout his short story. However, the film left me rather perplexed as it left out the main components of Kafka’s story that really allowed its message and meaning to flourish.

In this short film we don’t know Gregor very much, if at all. We hear him on the phone talking to a friend as he curses while in his baseball uniform. Suddenly we start to see his daunting transformation into a cockroach. Instead of Gregor mindlessly wondering whether he’ll make it to work after his metamorphosis, the director went the route of rooting the transformation in a much more realistic sense. We feel Gregor’s pain as we watch him scream and claw as he loses himself. While all this is going on we’re introduced to his parents downstairs, the protagonist within this film is really his father. It’s rather clear the parent’s marriage isn’t on great terms, as the father is very cold and constantly on his cell phone. It’s apparent the director’s modern interpretation was how the father neglects the relationships around him due to his stern coldness and the disassociation our wired world can bring out in some people. When he goes upstairs to check on his son who he chastises for being lazy, we see him encounter his son as a cockroach. But through this interpretation, it’s very obvious the cockroach is Gregor, he is still in his baseball uniform and holds out his arms begging for compassion from his father. Instead, his father shoots him point blankly killing his own son. His wife breaks down screaming at him for killing their only child. The director was working to convey how even though it was obvious the cockroach was indeed Gregor (he gave him more humanistic elements), the father’s disconnection from those around him due to modern society didn’t allow him to empathize with his son and shot him very coldly.

In this film there was no sister, and Gregor’s personality was essentially absent which were two major components of Kafka’s story. I understand the father was the protagonist but without allowing other character’s personalities to come through and bounce off one another, the interpretation felt rather empty as I did not feel anywhere near the sorrow when Gregor died in the film compared to the text. I understand the short film was trying to put a modern day spin on Kafka’s story, but the cockroach part was rather lost in this interpretation as it served to convey nothing. In Kafka’s text the bug part worked to show how Gregor’s life wasn’t much more meaningful then that of an insect due to his inability to form meaningful and purposeful relationships and that gets lost within the film interpretation. Overall I felt the creativity that was involved within Kafka’s storytelling got lost within this film’s adaptation of his work.