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The Trial
Drama / English / 1962
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Orson Welles directed film adaptation of a Franz Kafka story, which he apparently considers his best movie. This was also recommended to me in that thread over there.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
There's a term called "kafkatrapping" I really like. It describes something pieces of shit like to do, which I for many years have lacked the vocabulary to name. Basically it's when somebody asserts something in such a way that any attempt to refute it can be construed as evidence of it being true.
For example:
"You're always negative."
"No I'm not."
"See, there you go again, being negative."
I don't know much about Kafka, but he has an encouraging reputation for considering conventional things in unconventional ways and expressing skepticism towards certain institutions we take for granted.
A movie like this, which explores these ideas sounds like it would be up my alley, especially if it's delves into the "coherent surrealism" I've sought after since Ink, Imaginaerum, and Paranoia Agent.
But this movie was actually kinda garbage.
Main Guy is awakened by spooks in his room and neighboring apartment just being spooky. He assumes they're police, which they never confirm or deny, and they casually begin kafkatrapping Main Guy into a narrative before stating that he's "under arrest" for a crime they never specify.
Main Guy asks an officer what he's charged with and he says only the Lead Investigator can say, so he asks the Lead Investigator who goes "so you're saying you're innocent?"
This entire scene goes nowhere and, stupifyingly, it concludes with the "police" leaving and Main Guy disappointingly resigned to the fact that he's "under arrest".
So here, "under arrest" doesn't even mean detained. It doesn't even mean the police will impede you in any way whatsoever. "Under arrest" literally means ACTUALLY NOTHING because it amounts to ACTUALLY NOTHING the entire ******* movie, and yet Main Guy dwells on this repeatedly, across multiple scenes, in which he's at work, or talking to a neighbor, or doing some other random shit which entirely begs the question what "under arrest" even means if he's free to do whatever the hell he wants.
I'm inclined to guess that this is some kind of sloppy metaphor I'm just not getting, but regardless of what that metaphor could be, you've literally turned the entire conflict of the movie into one person moping about a literal non-issue.
It's like if I pointed finger guns at a child and said, "pewpew, you're dead", and they burst into tears and spent the next 2 hours whinging about how I killed them and they're "dead now" or some equally retarded shit.
How does this not instantly trivialize your movie? How does this not reduce the conflict all the way down to the level of a Teletubbies episode? Teletubbies makes more sense than this bullshit movie.
So Main Guy goes tromping around whinging to different people about being under arrest and at least 3 different girls get in opportunities to snog him for absolutely no reason. The club dancer is actually the most believable of the 3 because she initially rebuffs his advances then orders him to leave her apartment when she hears the dreaded "I'm arrested" news.
Another girl who has less than a minute of screentime comes back and says:
BITCH, I DON'T KNOW YOU.
Then later she says:
That has got to be one of the fastest Overnight Romance speedruns in any movie I've ever seen. This character comes out of the ******* blue and acts like she's got every man's cock in her hand, what the ****??
There eventually IS a Trial, and it's literally one scene in the first third of the movie. Main Guy just gets directed to some random building where he gets shut into a room full of people. He jumps up to the podium and starts lecturing everyone in the room about how innocent he is and then he leaves. Some "Trial", it's like Welles has never even seen a courtroom before in his life.
For the rest of the movie he's just walking around and other people are commenting about his "case" which is somehow ongoing? Once again, there is no tangible consequences to him having "a case" or being "under arrest", it's just a meaningless concept.
And if it's not already clear, the dialog throughout this whole movie is godawful. It's like Welles (or Kafka?) has ADHD. Characters regularly talk over each other, get constantly sidetracked into brutally irrelevant conversation, and Main Guy just straight interrogates random people for no conceivable reason I can think of.
There's a lot of bizarre shit that never amounts to anything, like when Main Guy accuses officers of taking bribes at the trial he finds them being whipped in a broom closet for some reason, so he offers to bribe Whip Master who then says he doesn't accept bribes.
Okay, so that accomplished... nothing at all.
There's like 3 co-workers of his who showed up at the investigation at his home who just hover together in a couple shots and they accomplish nothing at all.
Main Guy repeatedly visits a bed-ridden attorney who despite being worshipped by his other clients also accomplishes nothing at all.
I was genuinely falling asleep halfway through this movie.
Finally, at some point near the end after Main Guy gets into a series of run-on arguments with various people and the sets become somewhat abstract and disconnected... two of the officers show up, grab Main Guy, drag him around the world in 80 days, find a randomass ditch and puts him in it.
They wait for him to yell at them then they enter the ditch with him, lay him down, then begin menacingly passing a knife back and forth over his body multiple times before leaving. He yells at them to kill him and they chuck dynamite at him.
BOOM, credits.
What in the actual bloody Christ did I watch?
One of the worst endings I've ever seen to any movie in my entire life was Out of the Blue, and this the closest any movie I've seen since has gotten to Out of the Blue.
I can't even really call it a nonsense movie because there's a roughly coherent narrative beneath all the dialog, but so much of it is unimportant sidetracking bullshit. I didn't even realize "The Advocate" was supposed to be an attorney, let alone Main Guy's attorney, he wasn't even at the ****ing Trial! Why did the Trial END before the halfway point of the movie called THE TRIAL???
In no other movie I've ever seen have I ever noticed a double continuity error, where they rapidly cuts between 3 shots and each one failed to face the character the right way around to match the previous shot.
What was the artistic vision there? Where did that factor into Roger Ebert's 4 out of 4 stars?
Kafka was a box office bomb and it's far more serviceable than this drek.
Final Verdict: [Bad]
The Trial
Drama / English / 1962
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Orson Welles directed film adaptation of a Franz Kafka story, which he apparently considers his best movie. This was also recommended to me in that thread over there.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
There's a term called "kafkatrapping" I really like. It describes something pieces of shit like to do, which I for many years have lacked the vocabulary to name. Basically it's when somebody asserts something in such a way that any attempt to refute it can be construed as evidence of it being true.
For example:
"You're always negative."
"No I'm not."
"See, there you go again, being negative."
I don't know much about Kafka, but he has an encouraging reputation for considering conventional things in unconventional ways and expressing skepticism towards certain institutions we take for granted.
A movie like this, which explores these ideas sounds like it would be up my alley, especially if it's delves into the "coherent surrealism" I've sought after since Ink, Imaginaerum, and Paranoia Agent.
But this movie was actually kinda garbage.
Main Guy is awakened by spooks in his room and neighboring apartment just being spooky. He assumes they're police, which they never confirm or deny, and they casually begin kafkatrapping Main Guy into a narrative before stating that he's "under arrest" for a crime they never specify.
Main Guy asks an officer what he's charged with and he says only the Lead Investigator can say, so he asks the Lead Investigator who goes "so you're saying you're innocent?"
This entire scene goes nowhere and, stupifyingly, it concludes with the "police" leaving and Main Guy disappointingly resigned to the fact that he's "under arrest".
So here, "under arrest" doesn't even mean detained. It doesn't even mean the police will impede you in any way whatsoever. "Under arrest" literally means ACTUALLY NOTHING because it amounts to ACTUALLY NOTHING the entire ******* movie, and yet Main Guy dwells on this repeatedly, across multiple scenes, in which he's at work, or talking to a neighbor, or doing some other random shit which entirely begs the question what "under arrest" even means if he's free to do whatever the hell he wants.
I'm inclined to guess that this is some kind of sloppy metaphor I'm just not getting, but regardless of what that metaphor could be, you've literally turned the entire conflict of the movie into one person moping about a literal non-issue.
It's like if I pointed finger guns at a child and said, "pewpew, you're dead", and they burst into tears and spent the next 2 hours whinging about how I killed them and they're "dead now" or some equally retarded shit.
How does this not instantly trivialize your movie? How does this not reduce the conflict all the way down to the level of a Teletubbies episode? Teletubbies makes more sense than this bullshit movie.
So Main Guy goes tromping around whinging to different people about being under arrest and at least 3 different girls get in opportunities to snog him for absolutely no reason. The club dancer is actually the most believable of the 3 because she initially rebuffs his advances then orders him to leave her apartment when she hears the dreaded "I'm arrested" news.
Another girl who has less than a minute of screentime comes back and says:
“Am I such a nothing in your eyes that you won’t stay a little while longer when I ask you?”
Then later she says:
“I’ll go with you wherever you want and you can do with me whatever you like. What’s wrong, don’t you believe me?”
There eventually IS a Trial, and it's literally one scene in the first third of the movie. Main Guy just gets directed to some random building where he gets shut into a room full of people. He jumps up to the podium and starts lecturing everyone in the room about how innocent he is and then he leaves. Some "Trial", it's like Welles has never even seen a courtroom before in his life.
For the rest of the movie he's just walking around and other people are commenting about his "case" which is somehow ongoing? Once again, there is no tangible consequences to him having "a case" or being "under arrest", it's just a meaningless concept.
And if it's not already clear, the dialog throughout this whole movie is godawful. It's like Welles (or Kafka?) has ADHD. Characters regularly talk over each other, get constantly sidetracked into brutally irrelevant conversation, and Main Guy just straight interrogates random people for no conceivable reason I can think of.
There's a lot of bizarre shit that never amounts to anything, like when Main Guy accuses officers of taking bribes at the trial he finds them being whipped in a broom closet for some reason, so he offers to bribe Whip Master who then says he doesn't accept bribes.
Okay, so that accomplished... nothing at all.
There's like 3 co-workers of his who showed up at the investigation at his home who just hover together in a couple shots and they accomplish nothing at all.
Main Guy repeatedly visits a bed-ridden attorney who despite being worshipped by his other clients also accomplishes nothing at all.
I was genuinely falling asleep halfway through this movie.
Finally, at some point near the end after Main Guy gets into a series of run-on arguments with various people and the sets become somewhat abstract and disconnected... two of the officers show up, grab Main Guy, drag him around the world in 80 days, find a randomass ditch and puts him in it.
They wait for him to yell at them then they enter the ditch with him, lay him down, then begin menacingly passing a knife back and forth over his body multiple times before leaving. He yells at them to kill him and they chuck dynamite at him.
BOOM, credits.
What in the actual bloody Christ did I watch?
One of the worst endings I've ever seen to any movie in my entire life was Out of the Blue, and this the closest any movie I've seen since has gotten to Out of the Blue.
I can't even really call it a nonsense movie because there's a roughly coherent narrative beneath all the dialog, but so much of it is unimportant sidetracking bullshit. I didn't even realize "The Advocate" was supposed to be an attorney, let alone Main Guy's attorney, he wasn't even at the ****ing Trial! Why did the Trial END before the halfway point of the movie called THE TRIAL???
In no other movie I've ever seen have I ever noticed a double continuity error, where they rapidly cuts between 3 shots and each one failed to face the character the right way around to match the previous shot.
What was the artistic vision there? Where did that factor into Roger Ebert's 4 out of 4 stars?
Kafka was a box office bomb and it's far more serviceable than this drek.
Final Verdict: [Bad]