Plot and My Pseudo-Analysis and Review:  To be brutally frank, this movie is what I would call a "Kafka fanfic"; that is, characters from his life and works are mixed together into a somewhat paranoid flick.  It should be made clear this is NOT based on any particular one of his stories, as some friends of mine thought when they saw it.  And the Kafka in the movie is and isn't the real Franz Kafka; although much of the film steals shamelessly from his life, the real Kafka was in fact a bit more friendly and genial, although he could hardly hope to have undergone such an experience as the one in the movie!
    Kafka, an insurance worker who writes in his spare time "by myself, for myself" finds his best friend Eduard Raban has been murdered and the more he finds out the more he is drawn into the shadowy world apparently centered at the Castle, which looms over Prague.  He cannot escape until he reaches the bottom of the mystery.  In the words of the blurb on the back of the box: "The year is 1919.  The setting is Prague, Czechoslovakia, a shadow world of ominous alleyways and winding cobbled streets.  Oscar winner Jeremy Irons plays Kafka, an insurance clerk and aspiring writer leading a staid and reclusive life—until his closest friend mysteriously disappears without a trace.
    "A seductive co-worker (Theresa Russell) leads Kafka to a group of anarchists who speak of a 'cover up of monumental proportions' controlled from within a castle outside the city.  Searching for the truth, Kafka ventures behind the castle's walls...and discovers a secret more terrifying than anything he ever imagined."
    The (mostly) black and white photography of Prague is absolutely wonderful to see; if nothing else the film could act as a beautiful travelogue.  The references to Kafka's life and works are everywhere; Raban is from Wedding Preparations in the Country, for instance, and the co-worker who also has an interest in Raban, Gabriela Rossman, seems to be based on Milena Jesenská, one of his female acquaintances.  The name steals from both Amerika (Karl Rossmann is the protagonist in that novel) and one of his sisters, Gabriele.  The movie is filled with frustrating bureaucratic impasses, à la The Trial and The Castle (there's even a Buergel), and incidents in his life (for example, the Letter to His Father is important in one scene), and so on.  You could play a very entertaining game of "Spot the Reference" if you were inclined to do so.
    This would do little good if the story itself was dull.  But in fact I thought that the story was intriguing in itself.  The characters were well drawn, intriguing, and fascinatingly acted.  The plot twists involving the Castle and its paperwork were a little difficult to follow, but that contributes to the "frustrating bureaucracy" aspect of the movie.  Near the end, the film does turn into a kind of horror flick, although one in keeping with the plot.  In sum, I liked the movie and think it's worth a rental.  Just my two cents.

    Kafka's Friend:  What are you working on?
    Kafka:  Oh, a thing about a man who wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect.

    (Kafka talking to Bizzlebek the gravedigger/stonecarver/sculptor)
    Bizzlebek:  But no one should call himself an artist unless he's paid for it, and perhaps not even then.
    Kafka:  Yours is a very noisy line of work.
    Bizzlebek:  Well, it's external noise, whereas you — the reverberations are inside.  I've read your stories; they're quite fantastic.
    Kafka:  I can't imagine what you could have seen.
    Bizzlebek:  Oh, just what you've published.
    Kafka:  In magazines nobody reads.  They should be filed away in the Castle with all the other useless bits of paper.
    Bizzlebek:  Nonetheless, some of us take an interest in your case.  That one story, for instance, about the penal colony—
    Kafka:  Hm?
    Bizzlebek:  The needles inscribing the judgment into the flesh of the condemned man.  It's...it's new.  I need to find a clever device to make my work more noticeable.

    Kafka (narrating what is apparently a letter to his mother):  The terrible toil of the insurance office continues as ever.  I am continually harassed by petty tyrants, as I issue pointless reports.  My friend Eduard has disappeared.  You never met him though because I never dared bring a friend home, not with Father lording over us all from his armchair.  Now I gather Anna paid you a visit.  My relations with her have been...difficult, to say the least, and I can only hope Father didn't frighten her away any further.  Your son, your loving son, your occasionally loving son, your incapable of loving son, your absolutely bored to death with any sort of family life son.

    Inspector Grubach:  Kafka...Kafka...Kafka?  Is that your real name?
    Kafka:  Yes, why shouldn't it be?

    Chief Clerk:  I understand you fancy yourself as a writer.
    Kafka:  In a small way.
    Chief Clerk:  You should find a more...athletic hobby.  Put some color in your cheeks.

    (Kafka talking to his two totally incompetent assistants, Ludwig and Oscar.)
    Oscar:  It's not too bad working here, though.
    Kafka:  You've never felt it was a horrible double life from which there's probably no escape but insanity?
    Ludwig:  Yes.
    Oscar:  No.
    Both:  No.
    Kafka:  I envy you.
    Oscar:  You should be content, you know.
    Ludwig:  You should!
 
 
   (Kafka narrates a somewhat shortened, altered Letter to his Father.)

    Kafka:  Dearest Father,
            I had always believed that it is better to know the truth than to live in ignorance.  Now I shall find out if I was right.  I can no longer deny that I am part of the world around me, nor can I deny, despite our differences, that I remain your son.  And so I hope only that these late, perhaps insignificant, realizations might reassure us both a little and make our living and our dying easier.

    (Kafka prepares to enter the mysterious Castle.)
    Kafka: You mentioned that you admire my work.
    Bizzlebek:  Yes...
    Kafka:  Would you do me a favor?
    Bizzlebek:  Another one?
    Kafka:  Well, if I don't see you later, would you go to my house, find my notebooks, and destroy them.  And all of my manuscripts, they're none of them finished.  Just burn them, all right?
    Bizzlebek:  What an extraordinary request.
    Kafka:  A true friend would do it.
    Bizzlebek:  Not necessarily...A wife would!  (Laughs)

    (Kafka after finding out the secret of the Castle.)
    Kafka:  I've tried to write nightmares, and you've built one.