AFTER SPLITTING UP WITH DIANE KEATON in the film Annie Hall, Woody Allen's lugubrious Alvy hooks up with a hippy-dippy music journalist for a one-night stand that does neither of them any favours. "Sex with you is really a kafkaesque experience," says Pam, over a postcoital cigarette. "I mean that as a compliment." Given that Pam (a fabulously drifty Shelley Duvall) is a self-confessed Rosicrucian, with a chat-up style that leans heavily on the word "transplendent", it's clear that finding a philosophical vocabulary for life's highs and lows is not her strongest suit.
Annie Hall was released in 1977 - 30 years after the first usage of the adjective "kafkaesque" was recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary. One might have thought that such a resounding satirical takedown in an Oscar-winning film would make the word an embarrassment. But no. Fastforward to 2010 and it was back in the satirical crosshairs, as the title of an episode in the third series of Breaking Bad, in which bags of blue meth from Walt and Jesse's superlab are distributed in tubs of batter to fried chicken restaurants across the American south-west. The pair's lawyer, Saul, tries to persuade a bemused Jesse to launder his ill-gotten gains by becoming the tax-paying proprietor of a nail salon. When the leader of Jesse's support group says his working conditions sound kafkaesque, he has no idea how right he is.
Denne historien er fra June 07, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra June 07, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Bring it on home Led Zep's first biopic
How were the famously interview-shy rock gods persuaded to take part in a film about their early success with the band telling their own story?
Dead souls
The Nobel laureate bears witness to Korea's traumatic past as one woman's quest is told through haunting, harrowing imagery
Object lesson
An expat couple curate their lives by plants anc Radiohead LPs in this deliciously pessimistic chronicle of Berlin life
Legacy of violence
A seething and erudite-but flawedindictment of the west's role in the creation of Israel and everything that has flowed from it
The right are wrong on climate-why is the UK following their lead?
If you care about the world we are handing on to future generations, the news last Thursday morning was dramatic.
Power pointe
Ballet has always been more than just a job for Carlos Acosta. And as director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, he is trying to make it bigger than ever
Borders can't contain the devastating, destabilising crisis engulfing Sudan
As Sudan approaches its third year of civil war, the dynamics are shifting.
Heroes to villains
With 13 Oscar nominations, Emilia Pérez's cast and crew should have been flying high. Then came a social media scandal and a fearsome backlash
Bukele's rise Strongman who became the darling of the right
Five hours after being shot in the belly, a Haitian accountant sat in a Port-au-Prince emergency room pondering how his homeland might be saved.
Trump is fuelling lethal fantasies of driving people from their land
The shock and awe continues and it only gets more shocking and more awful.
