Location, Location, Location.

This was the second time I have read The Trial. Not surprising, it was just as chaotic and scrambled as I remembered it to be. Watching Welles’s version in comparison made the book is even more scattered. A big difference I saw between the two versions was the setting used. Setting plays a big part in Welles’s movies. “Citizen Kane”, for example, opens with a sequence of towering gates and walls and fences. With each cut of the film, the camera pans closer and closer to a massive house-well, more of a castle than anything. It’s the same case in “The Trial”. The size of the rooms compared to the size of K. play a large roll in the movie. For example, when K. is helping the friend of Miss Burstner he is trying hard to figure out the details of why Miss Burstner is leaving Mrs. Grubach’s household. The friend is not giving him a lot of details and he is very much left in the dark. They are walking through a desolate landscape that is wide open and completely abandoned. In contrast to the Trasher (Kafka, 58-63) scene, K. is in a much smaller area. He has full control of the situation because he is the one that brought it on. He is the one that ratted the men out at the hearing for trying to take his shirts and bribes (35). He is now stuck in a suffocating space that he cannot escape from. As the Thrasher begins to beat these men, K. finds himself in the middle of it and cannot leave the room without one of the men trying to escape with him. In the movie, it seems that when K. is in a situation that he doesn’t have a grasp on, the space around him is overbearing and almost too big. It’s as if the space is so expansive, he is more alienated than when he is crowded around a group of people, trying to take action.

Another difference in the book and movie was the way K. entered the room for his first hearing. In the book, he is surrounded by people, asking if they know a carpenter named Lanz (30-1). After a while, the tenants begin following him up the stairs, trying to help him find the fictitious Lanz. When he reaches the woman doing her washing, she tells him the room he is supposed to go to. In the movie, he enters the building and is completely alone. The washer is there to tell him about the room but other than that, there are no tenants around. In this scene, Welles explores the element of alienation further by making K. feel as if he is all alone in this building, sparing the woman who barely speaks to him at all. This mirrors his situation because he is a guilty man and no one seems to sympathize with him. They are there but rather than helping him, they don’t seem to care much for what he is going through. K. is, like he is in the building, totally alone sans the people that are only there to conduct business.

This element of alienation compared to location is also seen in K.’s office. In the book, Kafka writes it as though K. has his own office and he can control who comes in and out. In the movie, his desk is one of many in a vast space. K. is going through his own trials and tribulations and even though he is in an expansive space filled with people, he is still alone in all of this.

Something else that popped out at me while comparing the text and movie actually has nothing to do with scene settings. It centers around the way K. carries himself. The scene where K. feels as though he is about to faint, and that young man helps him is very backwards (53). In the movie, K. becomes extremely discombobulated and that, mixed with the background music, makes the scene feel as disoriented and dazed as K. feels. While reading the book, K. seems calmed and collected. He is embarrassed because he needs help walking but it isn’t as disjointed as the movie plays it out to be. The same goes for the opening scene. In the book, K. is confused and aggravated but he carries himself calmly enough because he knows he has done nothing wrong. In the movie, he is nervous and agitated and almost paranoid when he is around these cops. To me, it all just seemed a little backwards, but that may have been the way I was reading it.

The Parable and Death

In The Trial, Orson Welles has taken “the parable of the Law” theme found in Kafka’s novel and put it at the forefront of the movie. On the other hand, in the novel this theme is not mentioned until K.’s conversation with the priest in Chapter 9. Yet, Welles chose to open the movie with an explanation of “The Law.” It is presented as the central theme underlying this film. This is a huge change from the novel, in which the conversation concerning the parable has the back and forth banter characteristics of a disagreement. K. views it as a deceptive ploy by the doorkeeper, while the priest attempts to explain its true meaning. This explanation goes over K.’s head as the priest’s reasoning confuses him.

Welles’s K. was more aware of the parable and his own role within it. This is evident by Welles’ changing of the ending. In the film, K. resists somewhat and dies with dignified anger. This would suggest that the movie and K. understand the central theme of the parable. While in the novel, K. goes out “like a dog.” Welles’s film version makes changes to The Trial which allow it to better fit into the context of the parable. Symbolically, this is especially evident as K. enters and exits through numerous doors throughout the movie. The parable becomes the moral of the movie which K. has been subjected to. Comparatively, Kafka fits the parable within the context of his novel, not vice versa. The character, even in the end, does not fully realize the truth of the priest’s words or the full meaning of his own death.

The death of the movie by explosives from a distance versus an up close knife stabbing is another interesting change by Welles. Having his executioner’s further away in the film signifies the impersonal and distant nature of the law in relation to K. Even at the end, K.’s death only adds to the abstractness of K.’s world versus Kafka’s more personal plot. Furthermore, Welles wanted to maintain the disconnection between K. and his surroundings found in the rest of the play. Despite all the people with knowledge of K’s case, none could truly understand it or help him. And even so, the K. found in Welles’s film, at least put up a fight instead of merely accepting the parable ignorantly like Kafka’s K who basically laid down to die.

Locations

The one adaptation that I see most specifically is the choice of locations. While reading Kafka's version, I always interpreted K. as more strong minded/strong willed. I came to this interpretation from how K. speaks, thinks, and acts. However in Welles' version, K. is the exact opposite. He appears to be lost and very powerless. Welles does a great job with choosing the locations to make K. as small as possible. Camera placement and deep focus truly emphasize this feeling Welles is attempting to get across to the viewer. One of my favorite shots is the wide angle, long take in which K. tries to Frau Grubach's friend with the trunk. Both the size of the space and buildings, along with the camera placement, make K. seem so minuscule to both the world and his situation. The other notable scenes are the office in which he works, the court room, and the locations used when K. talks with his cousin.

As for the themes Welles employs in his film, I had to first look at the themes of The Trail itself. A Michael J. Cummings posted on his website that one of the themes revolves around the fact that "a man has no alternative but to accept his own destiny" (Cummings). I believe that Welles does a great job at revolving his film around this theme. All he does, in my opinion, is change the mind state of the character K..

http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/TheTrial.html#Themes

Adaptation of K's death from Kafka to Welles

I believe the best place to demonstrate the truth of Naremore's feelings on Welles is K's death scene. In the original novel, K's last words on his own death reflect its dehumanizing effects: "Like a dog," he cries (Kafka). In Welles' reimagining of this scene, K laughs in bitter triumph just before his death that no matter what they put him through, he will not choose death. In contrast to the shameful knifing in the heart of the original, the movie's K dies in a blast of dynamite with the force of a firework's display set to emotional music. In this way, Welles reframes Kafka's ignoble snuffing out of K's life into a sort of heroic moral victory over K's oppressors.

Speaking of K's oppressors, while the novel leaves them shadowy, Welles reframes the girls who bombard him before his visit with Titorelli into a horde of watchers who make concrete the court's hold over him. The primary manifestation of the court's omnipotence is, characteristically, Welles himself, playing as in Touch of Evil a character where Welle's intimidating physical size and presence is key. Kafka's preoccupation with shadowy, sinister bureaucracy is transformed into Welle's particular obsession with personal power and its decay: the powerful figure of the lawyer is shown in the twilight of his influence, confined for the most part to his bed while the sexually charged figure of Leni hovers discontentedly around him. This mirrors the Xanadu scenes in Citizen Kane where Susan Alexander plays a waning Kane's unwilling satellite.

Moving back specifically to the death scene, however, it is preceded directly by a repetition of the parable with which Welle's begins the movie. This gives the movie a sense of unity between beginning and end that is similar to Citizen Kane's use of the unifying motif of Rosebud. Using the parable as the movie's beginning and penultimate scene brings home the notion that the parable mirrors the plot of The Trial. Whereas in Kafka's version there is a discussion of the parable in which both K and the priest make points about the story's meaning, Welles' version excises much of the priest's commentary and dwells upon K's line that that accepting everything the doorkeeper says as necessary rather than true "turns lying into a universal principle" (Kafka). This reframing focuses on K's resistance to the opression of the law instead of the very hopelessness of resistance as Kafka does. Throughout the novel, Kafka mocks each attempt K makes to resist his fate, starting with his speech during his interrogation. While Welles maintains that scene, he fails to allow it to become a universal pattern throughout K's trial. He maintains K's human dignity in the face of all his adversity; instead of being dehumanized in death, K dies while laughing in the face of all he's encountered and thus remains a human, somewhat heroic figure who has stood for the innocent and good in the "Wellesian morality play" (Naremore).

The Trial compared to Inception

The novel “The Trial” by Franz Kafka deals a lot with the sense of reality and displacement of normal events and objects, like the courts being above run-down apartments complexes. A film that takes this idea to a somewhat extreme sense is the 2010 blockbuster hit, “Inception.” This film pushes all barriers of the dream-like theme and having things be not what they appear.

Typically we think of courtrooms being in large stone buildings with a large number of official insignias and signs. However, “The Trial” plays off the idea of nothing being what it seems and places the courtrooms in what some people would consider slums, above run-down apartments and buildings. The main character, K, is then required to enter very unsettling circumstances to gain access to these courts. Like K in the novel, the young character, Ariadne, in “Inception” also learns to face adversity in a world where nothing is real.

This video clip is explaining the world they are living in and how it isn’t anything anyone expected. Towards the end of the clip, explosions begin throughout the square in which they’re sitting. This feature of the movie almost startles the audience, almost like how finding out courtrooms and official members of the government are doing business in slums of “The Trial.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S41r9GSLoGA&feature=related

At around 22 seconds into the clip, Leonardo DiCaprio says the line, “…you never really remember the beginning of a dream, do you? You always wind up right in the middle of what’s going on.” This is very relevant to the novel, “The Trial.” The first line of the book states, “Someone must have been telling tales about Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested,” (Kafka 5). The audience is almost thrown into the world of this character that we have no background on, and we have no idea if what we’re reading is a true account, or a dream, or just a made-up story. This film also connects to the novel on a paradoxical level.

The novel features the parable of “the law” which is about a young man who wishes to gain entry to the law, however he has to get past the doorkeeper. Even though “Inception” does not feature a parable, it does make reference to a paradoxical piece of artwork, the Penrose Stairs, also called the impossible staircase. Both “The Trial” and “Inception” draw from other pieces of literature or art in order to enhance the point they are both trying to make.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvSD1EAlAUQ

In order for the characters in “Inception” to keep the dream worlds alive, they need to master making mazes. One of the tools for these mazes is the infinite staircase. So many different movies and novels draw on other forms of literature to keep theme of the storyline going and enhance the reader and viewers experience.

Both Welles and Kafka have what could be seen as a somewhat dark style of directing and writing. They like to have things appear often uncomfortable at times and stretch the creative mind of the reader and viewer. In “The Trial,” Kafka makes the story line, characters, and character interactions all very complex and at often times very confusing. In order to adapt to this style, Welles directs his adaptation in the same confusing manner. Some scenes feel extremely cramped and almost cluster phobic. It disorients the viewer at times and makes them feel very disjointed and uncomfortable. Most readers of novels expect them to start dark and then end on somewhat of a lighter note, however “The Trial” breaks all of those barriers and ends in almost a darker place than it started with the death of K. Welles expresses the darkness of this film in his use of lighting and extreme shadow use. A lot of the characters are never in full light and can’t be fully seen. This adds suspense and another level of darkness to the film. Welles and Kafka have very unique and different style of directing and writing, however they compliment each other in an excellent way.

Blog #1 Topic

Blog response #1 – 400 or more words
Post by Tuesday 2/22, 10 PM
Secondary responses (comments on peer posts) must be posted by the end of the week.

Consider one or more of the following elements of Kafa’s novel The Trial.

-Huld, the Lawyer
-Block, the client
-The treatment of women
-Titorelli, the Painter
-The parable of “the law”
-Locations such as K's office, the court clerk offices, etc ...
-The conclusion of the novel – K’s death

Among other things about the film version by Orson Welles, James Naremore suggests that “Kafka’s ironic, impersonal vision of despair has been transformed into a Wellesian morality play” (198).

Consider how one or more of the above elements has specifically been adapted or transformed to fit Welles’ aesthetic and thematic preoccupations. How does his film version employ and/or reconsider Kafkaesque moods and themes? Be specific as possible (discussing the best of what you can recall of the filmic approach and employing direct evidence from the novel).

Welcome to the Blog

Hi all!

Soon I will post your first discussion topic. Each member of your group will be expected to post a primary response to the topic by Tuesday 2/22, 5 PM. You will then be expected to post at least two secondary responses by the end of that week. This will, more-or-less, mirror the basic schedule for the blog weeks throughout the semester.

Details on this assignment is located on the side of this blog. I will also discuss the assignment in more detail on 2/9 and field any technical questions in the week following.

Best, sb

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