Frank (4/5 Stars)

This bizarre story starts in a quiet beachside community in the United Kingdom. A young twenty-something lad named Jon, played by Domhnall Gleeson, walks the the shoreline, pad and pen in hand, jotting down the various things he sees in a desperate attempt to force inspiration for song lyrics. A woman jogs past him in a red coat. “Woman in a red coat jogging!” He hums to himself. A woman jogs past him in a blue coat. “Woman in a blue coat! Does she know the woman in a red coat!” Terrible just terrible. Upon chance occurrence he comes upon a man attempting to drown himself in the ocean. The paramedics are dragging him away to the ambulance when Jon strikes up a conversation with a few other people on the beach watching. They know the man. He was their keyboardist. They no longer have a keyboardist for their gig tonight. I play keyboard, says Jon. Okay, be at the stage door at 9pm. The group gets in their van and leaves.

Jon shows up at 9pm. He is instructed to play three chords and that’s it. The crowd is non-existent. One bandmate, a surly looking woman named Clara, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, is playing a theremin of all things. And then there is Frank, played by Michael Fassbender. He walks onto the stage in a wetsuit and a big fake paper mache head. They start in on the first song. It sounds absolutely strange. Frank sings in a deep voice and makes muscular robotic stage moves. Clara’s theremin has an electric short and sparks fly. She becomes angry, pushes over her instrument and storms out cursing. The drummer and guitar player follow leaving only Frank standing perfectly still and staring intently at Jon. Well, maybe, you can’t tell because Frank has a big fake head on. Then Frank leaves the stage too. The entire thing lasts less than a minute. What an act!

There is a concept in stand-up comedy called the ‘Comedian’s comedian.’ This was generally not the most successful or even the funniest comedian on the scene, but it was the type of comedian that other comedians would come out to see because they were doing something really edgy, exciting, and new. And Frank’s band is that. They are on a completely different wavelength and could not care less about connecting with any sort of audience. Jon is invited the next day for something big. He is excited and is picked up by the band. First thing he notices: Frank still has his big fake head on. Apparently he never takes it off, ever. Second: they are not going to a big gig. They are going to a remote cabin in the Ireland wilderness to take as long as it takes to record an album. Jon tries to explain that he told his boring office job that he would be back by Monday. ‘okay,’ is the reaction. Jon stays.

The character of Frank is a fascinating masterwork of acting by Michael Fassbender. The journey of understanding him oscillates from thinking the man is insane to thinking he is a well meaning musically inclined wise and nice person to realizing he is both of those things. Fassbender plays 95% of the movie without any facial expressions but this hardly matters. His physicality and voicework is very expressive not only in his movements, which are of an excited robot variety, but also in his stillness. You do not need to see Frank’s face to understand when he happy, or inspired, or nervous, or really really scared. And sometimes he goes ahead and describes his facial expressions in order to be more helpful. Frank is not the main character of this story (that would be Jon) but it feels like he is the main character. It is an Oscar nomination worthy performance, though maybe it is too far out there to be seriously considered as such.

The main theme of the movie is the education of Jon’s view of musical expression. He is an ambitious young man who realizes the talent of Frank and his band and sets out to raise awareness of this band on his blog and Twitter feed. Jon sees the endpoint of all their work as a vehicle for rockstardom. Through viral videos of the band doing really weird shit in the woods he gets a cult following for Frank and a gig at the South by Southwest music festival. Everybody in the band hates the idea, but Frank is inclined to do it out of a trust he has placed in Jon. All these people want to like and love us, he innocently asks. Yes, explains Jon, they have already seen and liked and will love you. They go to South by Southwest and all goes to shit. What Jon does not realize is that everything Frank does is especially personal and he wears the head not as a self-promoting gimmick but because he is enormously shy to the point of real psychosis. His bandmates understand this and quit the band before the gig but Jon has to figure it out for himself and almost destroys Frank in the process.

Where does musical talent come from? Jon bemoans the fact that he did not have an abusive childhood or a mental illness that would have expanded his mind in artistic creative directions. No, he realizes in a great scene at the end of the movie. Frank grew up in a nice home with nice parents and was always musically inclined. If anything, his illness hinders his artistic expression. But Jon grew up in a nice house with nice parents too. Why doesn’t he have any musical talent?

Jon makes it up to Frank though, he gets him back together with his band and at the end of the movie they make a song together with Jon on the outside looking in again. Some of the lyrics of the song include the phrases, “It’s nice to see you. It's really nice to be here. I love you all.” It is not a rare thing to hear a musician say these words to a crowd, but when Frank does it has a real profundity to it. Frank really means it. And yes it matters that there is no audience and Frank sings it to his band. You can’t say ‘I love you’ to an audience of people you’ve never met before and mean it. There is something to that surely and it may just be the difference between mediocre and sublime expression.