Last year’s Room was one of the year’s very best; a disturbing and emotional journey into the world of an abused mother and son, brought to life by an Oscar-winning Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay. This has perhaps unfairly overshadowed Irish director Lenny Abrahamson’s previous film, the surreal and brilliant semi-biopic Frank. The movie nevertheless retains a distinct identity of its own. In fact, watching the two side-by-side, it’s hard to tell they come from the same director.

Somewhere deep in the film’s DNA, visible only on a microscopic but fundamental level, is the originally intended biopic of real-life musical comedian Frank Sidebottom, a Mancunian comedian who took to wearing a strange paper mask over his head. Those looking for a straight adaptation – those unlikely few – aren’t going to find it here.

This movie follows an aspiring but creatively-bereft young musician, Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), and his chance encounter with the genre-defying band, “The Soronprfbs”, and their enigmatic singer Frank (Michael Fassbender). Frank is a brilliant artist, a visionary musician, and someone who refuses to ever take off his enormous, ostentatious paper-mache head. Joining the unconventional band in their woodland retreat to write a new album, Jon is determined to get to the secret of Frank’s ingenious songwriting – and the man behind the mask.

“The pace is almost a provocation, deliberately asking you to watch it again and again, teasing out each hint and strand of what is a surprisingly cohesive intellectual statement”

What makes Frank brilliant, aside from Abrahamson’s daring to find an A-list character actor like Fassbender and then confine him entirely to the insides of an enormous fake head, is that the focus pushes deeper than just the surreal action of the film. Despite the set-up, the film isn’t really a comedy. Frank is determined to achieve nothing less than tearing apart the very notion of creativity and reassembling something ‘true’ in its place. Frank has the talent Jon will never have, but lacks one thing – the desire for glory, the need for fame, that consumes and fills Gleeson’s character. Music for him becomes an exercise in trying to express something impossible to a world which simply doesn’t have a place for people like him.

To convey such hopeful, broken loss is a challenge for any actor. To do it inside an enormous paper head is testament to Fassbender’s rare skill as a character actor. His incredible physicality adds a sense of credibility to the character, making you come to believe that, yes, maybe Frank does exist, and, yes, maybe he is a genius. Abrahamson’s direction is subtle, more so than in Room. The movie is perfectly happy to take its time, to meander, to draw you into the odd little world of the Soronprfbs.

Room is dynamic, emotive, and intense, but for all of the raw emotion, for me it’s Frank that keeps on giving the more you watch it. The pace is almost a provocation, deliberately asking you to watch it again and again, teasing out each hint and strand of what is a surprisingly cohesive intellectual statement. This is a happy antidote to the usual A-list fare, casting great actors in blockbuster roles that lack a genuine core, emotional, intellectual, or otherwise.

Close-Up: It’s a Wonderful Life

It can’t help but remind me of another unconventional but brilliant film about music of the same year, Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash. What makes them perfect companion pieces is that their concern with what makes an artist one of the ‘greats’. In Whiplash, Miles Teller’s desperate reach for musical glory pushes him forward despite great personal cost. Conversely, in Frank, the title character shows the reality of what a life of trauma and mental illness leads to – these problems don’t make you a better artist, they break down those who could have been contenders.

Ultimately it comes down to the individual which film’s message they believe in, and which they take to heart. Whatever you decide, Frank is one of the most original, insightful, and daring films of the last few years. If you enjoyed Room, spare a couple of hours for its dark and delightful older sibling