1191 The Trial

[swo17]

Did Fidelity in Motion encode the SC release?

[ChunkyLover]

Did Fidelity in Motion encode the SC release?

I don’t believe so.

[ryannichols7]

there were surprisingly few reviews on the SC disc, but I'd love to know more about the HDR grade there versus here

I'm gonna go for the Criterion anyway - my dream was for a good commentary and Filming the Trial and they included both - I love Joseph McBride and would listen to him talk about basically any movie. he's a great match for this film...I think another tense Naremore/Rosenbaum track would've been a bit much for what's already an intense film!

I will echo that I wish a Kafka scholar or someone who looks at the relationship with the novel would be great. but it's hard to complain, I'm just glad it's finally coming and on UHD! believe this is my favorite announcement all year from Criterion so far.

[Randall Maysin Again]

An interesting bonus might have been Druga strana Wellesa (2005), a feature-length documentary about Welles's time spent working in Yugoslavia, where so I understand, a lot of The Trial was filmed. Most of Welles's films in the Clitelion Correction have borderline-obscene amounts of extra shite. Does it make sense that they might assume this film to be not as popular a title? Or are all his films film-bro favorites? Or what?

[Randall Maysin Again]

An interesting bonus might have been Druga strana Wellesa (2005) aka The Other Side of Welles, a feature-length documentary about Welles's time spent working in Yugoslavia, where so I understand, a lot of The Trial was filmed. Most of Welles's films in the Clitelion Correction have borderline-obscene amounts of extra shite. Does it make sense that they might assume this film to be not as popular a title? Or are all his films film-bro favorites? Or what?

[FrauBlucher]

I will echo that I wish a Kafka scholar or someone who looks at the relationship with the novel would be great.

I think the Kafka angle will come from the novelist, Jonathan Lethem, who's writing the booklet essay. He has a short story collection called Kafka Americana from 1999 that are based on the works of Kafka

[Mr Sausage]

How great would it've been if they'd commissioned someone like Reiner Stach instead?

[therewillbeblus]

I don't mean to come across as a philistine, but I really don't care for Kafka's source and think Welles adapted it in the best way possible. The film is an existential nightmare, and Welles' jagged form is perfect for it, transparently communicating the themes via grammatical sensations in a manner that does not require a Kafka scholar to grasp. I'd never stand against an academic extra, but this feels like a case far less necessary than the countless other films in dire need of one (like, say, the Duras double feature), since anyone who understands the surreal uprooting of "Kafkaeque" should be able to get as much out of this as anyone else

[Mr Sausage]

Tho' you meant to praise it, your post really highlights the movie's weakness: it's shallow. It's a transparent account of simple themes, your average person's general idea of Kafkaesque made tangible.

I think Welles misunderstood Kafka. He did a good job of capturing the claustrophobic spaces of Kafka's novel, but not its depths. There's plenty of striking and evocative imagery, but he never captures the spirit of Kafka's work. This is pro forma Kafka, the Kafka you get when think "wow, isn't this nightmare scary?", and stop there. So this is a chilling nightmare of entrapment and irrationality, but not much else.

I don't think you need a Kafka scholar to explain Welles' film, I think you need one to explain Kafka, to give an in-depth account of a difficult and tricky artist that people think they know a lot better than they do, and also give a sense of the cultural idea that's grown up around him. That way you get a good account of exactly what ideas Welles was interacting with, and what he really made (or didn't make) of them. That would be interesting. More interesting than a small appreciation by Jonathan Lethem anyway.

[knives]

The thing I would argue is that most don’t understand Kafka well and that the usage of Kafkaesque highlights that as his work doesn’t really fit the moniker as bureaucracy is rarely the actual villain, rather the protagonist’s nostalgia for a utopia and optimism. In that sense I’d argue Amerika as the ultimate work of Kafka, but even in The Trial K’s belief in stasis and the status quo is his undoing. The proverb at the beginning of the film, I can’t remember if it is included in the book or only among the shorts, cements this as the man’s unwillingness to engage with the guard as a person, but merely as a figure for the familiar system he represents prevents him from passing through the gate.

An academic reading of the film in relation to the book could be fascinating especially as Welles transforms it into a sort of parable for WWII. In that way Welles is connecting Kafka to something like Austeria which looks at how the victims did nothing to mitigate the damage that was dealt to them. As an aside, it would be interesting to look at these films and how they straddle concepts of victim blaming with ideas of self determination.

Back to Welles, this transformation I feel makes K a less sympathetic figure since he no longer is such a dreamer (I wonder what Kafka thought of Chaplin as they have so much in common) but rather is a kind of oblivious fool more akin to Stan Laurel. I’m being a bit deliberate in mentioning comedians as like Samuel Beckett I believe comedy is key to understanding Kafka who delighted on how weird the real world is and showing it through throwing destructive protagonists into systems much like comedy does.

[therewillbeblus]

Those are both fair and interesting responses, Mr Sausage and knives, though I'd argue that by enveloping us in a nightmare of broad powerlessness and identity-diffusion, Welles evokes all sorts of personal, rich sensations for the audience on an individual level, who often go to the movies to be cradled with some kind of internal logic. It may give us a tangible space to explore, but I don't think Welles was as interested in anything as specific as villainizing bureaucracy or making a WWII allegory, as he was sympathizing with K's inability to cope with a disruption from stasis, triggering bottomless existential devolution - not because he's a fool at all, but because, as in the book or Kafka's themes as you say, he's incapable of locating tools or a vision beyond that stasis of dreaming, hope for utopic conditions that don't exist for him. It's a great film about shattering egocentricity, even amongst those who come off as humble or happy to blend in with the pack - Ironically through accelerating it in the other direction.

K is the center of his own world, which provides him with predictability and thus comfort in security, so when things go sideways, he isn't foolish for his confusion and struggle to adapt, but totally unprepared and unable to locate skills he never developed, that were never supported in his world. What happens to him is simultaneous ego death of 'not being that important', let go from the world/God that's cradled him, and also a nightmare of ego-indulgence, where he is the center of a narrative but in a way that excludes his agency and disrupts opportunities to escape into delusional stability, while also suffocatingly including him. His cognitive part -our most trusted and dominant internal 'part'- is excluded but his emotional and physiological ones are put to the test. It's an IFS therapy hell, being forced into later-stage therapy without any internal consultation to engage with or accept an evolution of psychological dynamics changing hands. Anyways, from a therapeutic angle I think it's absolutely brilliant.

The only way I can see this read as "shallow" is if you look at the style and nothing else, though I'll admit that is an overwhelming tool to communicate what's under the iceberg. I disagree with a face value interpretation that it’s unidimensionally working to shield it, but it’s emphasis on ‘shielding’ with attention magnetically drawn to exterior agitation does reflexively emulate K’s focus on the tangible experience, since he can’t conceive of what’s deeper - and Welles accurately mimics K’s exhaustive attempts to simplify and grasp his deceptively-shallow experience on the surface with this approach. So I appreciate that it may seem like I "highlighted the film's weakness" but I personally think it's utilizing its bombastic exercise to achieve a complex and layered experience between viewer and self using the medium, and not just a shallow bombastic exercise at style-emulating-dysregulation. It’s a very rich experiment.

[Mr Sausage]

One pervasive reading of Kafka I've always bridled at was the one that treated him, and especially The Trial, as a surrealist George Orwell. So while I appreciate your typically thoughtful and eloquent personal analysis, I also feel like when you read Welles' film as "enveloping us in a nightmare of broad powerlessness and identity-diffusion", you're right, but also revealing the problem: the surrealist George Orwell take.

I think knives is right (and his comments on Kafka are always good), the prologue bit is key when it comes to ego, because Kafka is not talking within our usual psychological categories. The big door Josef K. wants to enter? It was made just for him, but he was never told or even treated like he could enter it, and so misses his chance to do whatever it was the door was made for. You could read this in modern psychological terms, but Kafka meant something more metaphysical than psychological, and as knives said, more comic in its horror (it's a comic bit, right? The guard who doesn't let you through the door with your precise name on it). But Welles reads these things as political and psychological, as cosmic nightmare rather than cosmic joke.

I was really excited when I first sat down to watch this--who wouldn't want to watch one great artist encountering another? But it disappointed me; I wanted more than just the claustrophobic nightmare, because that has never been the most frightening part of Kafka.

[therewillbeblus]

Hmm I appreciate your analysis of where the tone doesn’t gel and why, though I definitely find it (very darkly) humorous for largely metaphysical reasons, using psychological stimulation as a tool to emphasize. But I can also see how the horror elements inciting acute dysregulation inhibit a more obviously tonally eclectic experience. I still think it works as such, but I also think “the ultimate existential nightmare” and “the ultimate comedy about life” go hand in hand, maybe it’s more of a worldview access thing than a cinematic one (in that I’m more likely to look for the humor in the existential predicament vs Welles using the medium to shake his audiences in multiple tonal directions)

[knives]

I will say I do love the film, but as a Welles film and not at all Kafka. The scene with the advocate though I think captures a lot of the Kafka spirit and brings a nice flavor to the precedings.

[Mr Sausage]

If I remember, the humour in the movie is more farce, eg. the ending with its '"Wait, one more thing!" [*BOOM*]' shtick. But I remember liking the Advocate scene and the whirling nightmare with the children that I think comes right after. Like, there's strong stuff in the movie, but in general I'd say Welles' personality was too big to accommodate other voices. There's a lot more Welles than Kafka here. And that's fine. The question of whether it's a good adaptation is not the same as whether it's a good movie.

But I'd still love to see a Kafka scholar's take on the movie. I have no idea how the scholarly community sees it.

[FrauBlucher]

McBride previews the release

Mr. Sausage, McBride is a bit in your camp

[therewillbeblus]

Revisited Beau is Afraid, and with this recent conversation in mind, it plays a lot like an adaptation of The Trial only more focused on the comedic aspects. Both are unskilled characters at navigating their world-disrupting stressors, and also the center of the world from the get-go without their own consent or wishes (rewatching the Aster, the poster advertisement in the background during an objectively-placed early scene is a literal sign of his role, his back turned trying to hide from what pervasively awaits). K may have deluded himself with utopic complacency, but Beau has tried and failed to independently function in a complacent, static existence, and can't even manage that either - the intrusions manifesting from within or outside hardly matters, they’re synonymous (though the mid-point fantasy seems to reflect the delusional “dreamer” process of a Kafka protagonist, and I now think hints at Beau’s ability to dream and hope beyond the disruptive narrative we’re witnessing; a bit of cognitive dissonance I didn’t catch the first time). The relationship Kafka draws between the door and K's role but without external support that Mr Sausage outlines above seems to summarize a lot of what I get from Beau's experience in his milieu - though it strikes me as both a nightmare and a cosmic joke, which is also how I read The Trial

[Rayon Vert]

I've only seen this film once and I couldn't get into it at all.

Basing myself on my viewing notes, I feel it to be unengaging from the very start right through the end. I wrote: "Part of the problem seems to be turning the Anthony Perkins character, the celebrated Joseph K, into something of an absurd joke himself, so that there isn’t the required empathy possible to care about what happens in the absurdist nightmare that follows. Compare it with Arkadin, another extremely quirkly film, and the contrast is striking in terms of the appeal of the earlier film despite its shared “coldness”. Great visuals, especially the set designs, but the end result if most often too dull to motivate the will to engage with the material."

I'm just curious if anybody else had a reaction like this. (I read the novel, but so long ago that I couldn't compare them.)

I would have to revisit it, but really the motivation is very low since that experience was such a turn-off and I would certainly not get the disc just to give it another shot.

[Mr Sausage]

Yeah, I found it unengaging as well, tho' I don't remember being bothered over whether Josef K. is a joke or not (there is always something kind of pathetic about a Kafka protagonist, isn't there?). It's not a very successful movie.

[Big Ben]

Personal opinion here but I've always Kafka's stories themselves to darkly amusing, not in the "funny ha-ha" sort of way but humorous because of the blatantly and patently absurd situations (My two favorites being In a Penal Colony and The Hunger Artist) his protagonists find themselves in. I myself have only seen this film once, on what I assume was a bootleg DVD rented from Hastings(!) but I distinctly remember being more engaged with the oppressive atmosphere of how everything looked moreso than the various eccentricities of K himself. K is supposed to a bit of a doofus, because if he was too self aware I don't think The Trial would work as well as it does. I think the mistake people make when engaging with Kafka is that people simply assume that the be all and end in a good Kafka story simply involves absurdities being present within a nightmarish bureaucracy. I would argue that's only half of what should be really considered. To quote the story proper:

The man has come to the law for the first time and the doorkeeper is already there. He's been given his position by the law, to doubt his worth would be to doubt the law." "I can't say I'm in complete agreement with this view," said K. shaking his head, "as if you accept it you'll have to accept that everything said by the doorkeeper is true. But you've already explained very fully that that's not possible." "No," said the priest, "you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary." "Depressing view," said K. "The lie made into the rule of the world."

The really terrifying thing to me about stories like The Trial or The Castle is that the characters bend over backwards to justify the insidiousness of the system and allow the horrors to perpetuate as a result. To reiterate an earlier point if K was an intellectual and not something of a simpleton the story just wouldn't work in my opinion. Your mileage may vary obviously but I've always found Kafka significantly more enjoyable (Ha!) when the complicity of the characters is taken into account. Given Welles' many struggles with everyone from Hollywood to Joseph McCarthy I imagine this story resonated with him a great deal not least because of of Welles' awareness of how pointless his struggle was in the long run.

[Mr Sausage]

For me, what's offputting is not that the characters bend over backwards making justifications, it's that they take everything as self evident. So K. (in his various guises) is always pointing out absurdities and contradictions, hoping for an answer, only to be met with people for whom questioning is perfectly senseless. This is how things are; why doesn't he understand? They seem to know everything, yet illuminate nothing.

So there is the necessity of the law, and the absurdity of following it, but the impossibility of not following it. So what is the law anyway but the condition of existence? And who else made the law but god, whom we cannot communicate with; and if god tries to communicate with us, it will never reach us, and anyway we wouldn't know where to receive it even if it did. K. is an aimless questioner at every step, surrounded by people for whom the law is existence and existence self-evident, sending K. on a quest to discover a law that is necessary but inscrutable, made for him and seemingly not given to him.

[MichaelB]

I've only read the Willa and Edwin Muir translation of The Trial, which I later heard was widely regarded as a tonal misfire (the Muirs would occasionally try to "improve" Kafka's prose, missing the point that his use of repetition was deliberate), that's also riddled with technical errors (particularly legal terminology) and indeed use of now-dated English terms whereas the original German ones are still bang up to date ("guttersnipe" for "tramp", for instance). It's probably time to re-read it some four decades later, so is there a more recent translation that's closer to Kafka's original text?

[knives]

The Breon Mitchell seems to be the standard one nowadays.

[Mr Sausage]

I recommend the Breon Mitchell translation from Schocken. It's still heavily advertised as a new translation from the restored text. And while I haven't read them, I'm sure the new OUP and Penguin translations would suit you fine.

[MichaelB]

This is precisely the kind of answer I was hoping for - thanks both.