Adapting Kafka

[Acamus]

If any of you are familiar with The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, you might have stumbled upon the many attempts to adapt this book into a movie.
If you ask me, every single one of them suck. They don't catch the atmosphere of the book, they are over stylized and they are obviously a result of a way too low budget.
But that isn't really what I wanted to ask about.
I came across a comment regarding a trailer for an adaption of the book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H57OfsihAw

The comment reads as follows:

I dislike this. Specifically because as a lover of this tragic and delightfuly hilarious one of the few things I can wrap my mind around is that Franz Kafka never intended for Gregor to be visually defined. He was the insect, the one of our thoughts and horrors. The horror of change itself. The awful disgusting, repulsive, and dehumanizing nature of the unfamiliar. Also shitty acting. I mean good god.

Personally I am uncertain as to whether the commenter is right or not. It is quiet obvious that the bug is a metaphor in the book, but if you were to adapt the book, wouldn't it be best to leave the bug be?
Everything Kafka writes is seen from the narrator's borderline psychotic, paranoid and depressive point of view, so wouldn't showing Gregor as a human break the delusional portrayal of Gregor Samsa's mind? Or rather the accurate portrayal of Gregor's delusional mind.

Feel free to ask me to elaborate my question, I've been thinking about this question for so long that I don't know if I can express myself clearly.

 

[ChimpPhobiaFilms]

I'm familiar with Kafka's novel and some of the adaptations of it. This films doesn't seem very good because there's no human characteristics attributed to this bug at all, and the deliriousness of the story isn't reinforced by the style of the film. So I think to convincingly pull off this story, you need a human with strong bug characteristics or a bug with strong human characteristics to capture both his human and insect like elements. The tone of the film needs to suit the events as well. By creating a straightforward and understandable film, you're taking away what made the novel great - the insanity and lack of lucidity. So I think showing the complete extremes of one side (human or bug), and not presenting the other at all would result in something disappointing.

 

[Acamus]

I definitely agree. I read somewhere that the reason Gregor doesn't want his room to be emptied and the picture of the lady taken down is because this is the only humanity he has actually got left. Of course this is just one interpretation. But it does show that the metamorphosis isn't a complete transformation; at least his mind is still somewhat human.

If you look at the interpretation done by Arthur Pita, where he shows Gregor as a human being (it's a ballet/theatrical piece), you see the opposite: it's a man behaving like a bug, not a bug behaving like a man. I think it catches the atmosphere of the book to some degree, but it does show the whole situation from everybody else's point of view. That isn't very Kafka.
Do you think it'd be possible at all to depict Gregor as human being thinking he's a bug without breaking the way Kafka presented the story?

Btw. That Kafka shows everything from the delusional narrator's point of view is just how I interpret it. I believe it's a common interpretation, but feel free to comment on it if you disagree.

 

[ChimpPhobiaFilms]

If you look at the interpretation done by Arthur Pita, where he shows Gregor as a human being (it's a ballet/theatrical piece), you see the opposite: it's a man behaving like a bug, not a bug behaving like a man. I think it catches the atmosphere of the book to some degree, but it does show the whole situation from everybody else's point of view. That isn't very Kafka.
Do you think it'd be possible at all to depict Gregor as human being thinking he's a bug without breaking the way Kafka presented the story?

I think it's possible.

Btw. That Kafka shows everything from the delusional narrator's point of view is just how I interpret it. I believe it's a common interpretation, but feel free to comment on it if you disagree.

No, I agree with you on that.