thrown into judgment

Aurelia 2022-03-13 08:01:01

"A world that can be explained by evil principles is a kind world." There is no "kind and safe" world in "The Trial". Everyone is talking non-stop, but they are always short of breath, aphasia, meaningless, and even arguing over an unknown content. As a viewer I never understood what K was looking for, arguing for a "meaningless" innocence? Or to absolve a "non-existent" charge? If the trial is still legal, who should I ask for mercy? A group of unfamiliar spectators stacked on top of a three-story theater auditorium? Or the judges who can't search up and down, browsing the shady pictures printed in the code?

How does a "lawyer" endowed with an identity become the owner of power? In turn enslaves the client who empowers him. The construction of sovereign power itself does not depend on the law, but seeks a rationality deeper than the law, which in turn gives all the laws rationality and makes them function as laws. There is an eerie upside-down, top-down conspiracy in it, as if raising an endless cycle of ouroboros. And K was put into it without explanation, just as after waking up from a dream and hearing the news that the ruler had condemned him.

The absurd results of this reckoning cannot be explained by any evil reason, and K's chattering and restlessness cannot clear the entire line of history that has been hidden underground. Judgment, almost no one can escape. But only K has the epiphany that this is not a purely legal trial, it is not even about the law. Therefore, no one can convict himself except himself, and no one can defend himself except himself. Death, the highest punishment of the law, is what a coincidental isomorphism to the end of thinking. Confront a world full of weird and unfamiliar faces, faces ready to be judged or willing to be judged. K resisted, then exploded in laughter.

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Extended Reading
  • Esmeralda 2022-03-26 09:01:14

    Unimaginable admiration, I am afraid Welles is the closest copywriter to Kafka. In fact, human alienation is only one pole of Kafka's work, which also points to the chaotic structure of bureaucratic society. The studio is the perfect metaphor, a room in the movie that is claustrophobic on the one hand, and completely transparent on the other, watched by countless eyes. The space is as chaotic as The Shining, behind each door is a random microscopic part of the social structure, I can't imagine the storage room in the male protagonist's office area, which will be doubled as a punishment bureaucracy, it is simply Wells' room 237. Another of Welles' wisdom is to make the hero have a self-destructive intelligence. The protagonist of Kafka's works is definitely not a stylized and absolutely passive victim of society, but an infected patient who has given up treatment in a plague-ridden world, a combination of victim, accomplice and communicator; K is reluctant. In the case of becoming an accomplice in his own ending, he can't be superman, and he will never give up being superman, so he accuses the outside world that is accompanied by the same degree of self-denial.

  • Rubye 2022-03-25 09:01:23

    Cold War Kafka, on the one hand, through unparalleled modeling (in front of the opening PPT method, the lowered ceiling and the openness of machinery, the size contrast and distance of people under wide-angle lenses, and the black film-style contrast under hard light), Kasina On the other hand, K tried to escape from this disciplinary system: he made a generous statement during the interrogation, confronted the lawyer sternly "what if the world loses", and even Rejection is his child. In Kafka's pen, there is no healthy person, only a broken, diffuse "I", and Wells, with his tyrannical rage, casts a tragic anti-social hero whose execution is not a punishment for a crime, but an escape from it. Guilty (society) manifesto. I think this is one of the best literary adaptations, because it not only thoroughly understands the original book (the final scene is simply the picture of the book in my imagination), but also makes my own will (post-Auschwitz reflection) equal to it, just like K from the theater After walking out, walk into the courtroom like a theater. It penetrates and disintegrates the appearance of order represented by the law, and Albinoni's Adagio has never been so terrifying and so strong.

The Trial quotes

  • Joseph K.: I only came here because I wanted to see if the inside of this famous legal system was as loathsome as I guessed it was. And now I'm too depressed to want to see anything more. I just want to get out of here and be alone.

  • Joseph K.: Don't they check up on you at school?

    Irmie: They try to.

    Joseph K.: You sneak out after hours?

    Irmie: You're not the only crook in the family.