The Trial (1962)

Not rated, but this is pretty R-rated, especially for 1962.  There's some mild language, but the big thing is that there's just nudity.  It's for a second and it's just a sexual image, but it's also a picture from a book.  Still, Welles isn't exactly hiding from questionable content in this.  Josef K is often seduced by women he's never met.  There's implication of an incestuous relationship.  But again, 1962.  By today's standards, the movie's pretty tame.

DIRECTOR: Orson Welles

I was listening to a podcast today where the guest was comedian Larry Charles.  Charles used to hang out with Bob Dylan, so he's telling all these Bob Dylan stories.  And at one point he goes, "Bob, you gotta change this. No one is going to understand it."  And Dylan replies, "What's so bad about not understanding?"  I need to start employing that attitude when watching avant-garde stuff.  Unlike some of the more intense avant-garde film, The Trial actually presents some logical stuff that isn't insanely challenging.  Looking at the film, the time period, Welles himself, and the back of the box (what!  It's using what resources you have!), you can piece together a lot of the allegory going on here.  That doesn't mean that I'm not inserting some of my own argumentation here.

The Trial really runs that fine line between stuff I really really love and stuff I absolutely can't stand. I like certain brands of weird.  Can I tell you the thing that made this movie so much better for me?  It's a gutsy move and there are times in my life when I would have hated this, but I love that Welles just establishes early on that the events of the story follow the logic of a dream.  Now, part of me wants to write off the events of a movie as "just a dream." I'm confident that Welles doesn't mean that.  But dream logic is its own special thing and a lot of The Trial, being written by Franz Kafka, it excuses logic for the sake of emotion and imagery.  I forget how much of a cinematography and mise en scene guy that Orson Welles is.  People always reference Citizen Kane --as they absolutely should! --for its visuals.  But the thing about Kane is that it is partially grounded in reality.  To a certain extent, I like that about Citizen Kane.  True artists really shine when they have restrictions on themselves, when they aren't allowed to go too far. But The Trial is an interesting experiment in terms of what Welles probably wanted to do.

​It's kid-in-a-candy-store stuff.  Sometimes, that's exactly what an auteur deserves.  Welles isn't exactly one who shies away from experimentation and The Trial is kind of him getting free reign.  It's so weird that this is a collaboration between Welles and Alexander Salkind, a guy who I associate with being the almost stereotypical film producer.  He's the guy who drove almost every Superman property into the ground.  But hey, he gave Welles carte blanche and it shows in this movie.  Part of that doesn't surprise me.  Salkind was a guy who saw stars around famous names.  There's a reason that Marlon Brando plays Jor-El and gets larger billing over Christopher Reeve.  But for what really has the vibe of an avant-garde indie film, there's some money being thrown at this movie. Part of what makes The Trial so effective isn't necessarily the message or the performances (which are in no way under criticism), but rather the imagery of tight choreography and visuals.  When we are at Josef K's office, there's that imagery of an ant farm.  The noise is deafening and then the day ends.  Everyone gets up and leaves in almost absolute silence and it is haunting.  Like Welles stated with the logic of a dream, it does add to the chaotic world where the legal system doesn't matter.

And that's what it's all about.  The legal system, for all of its caveats and nobility about justice being blind, is the painting at the end.  It is justice and victory.  She is flying with wings on her feet, showing the facade of fairness when really being off-balance with the scales.  We're about to get into my bread and butter here, guys.  With a history minor, I have the thing that I can't stop thinking about.  Most men apparently are thinking about the Roman Empire.  I can't help thinking about Blacklisting, the Hollywood Ten, and Joseph McCarthy.  The back of the disc gave me the heads up about Blacklisting and the timeline fits.  As much as Josef K's story was written by Kafka in 1924, this film is a comment on the moment.  As chaotic and unbalanced as this dream world movie is, one of the consistent elements of the film is that Josef never really knows what he's accused of.  He should be more indignant about the whole thing, but again, we follow the logic of a dream.  Josef's constant frustration is that the legal system wants to see him fail.  It gives him perks and ways to bury himself, but the movie never really lets us forget that Josef K is actually innocent of any crime because no crime has been attached to him.

But we see that the way that people treat him is a story of escalation.  He starts the movie almost immediately on the defense.  The cops enter his room from a place that they should not have access to, the neighbor's loft.  Initially, if this was a story about treating him with an air of innocence, that is immediately removed when we find Josef's employers searching through personal belongings.  Already, Josef's life is upended.  While he's given the benefit of the doubt from his landlady, she doesn't take his advice once he demonstrates his frustration with her close-minded attitude.  He's defensive of other people who have not committed crimes, but have been judged by a de facto class system that looks down on lesser professions.  Honestly, Josef K's crime is liberalism.  He doesn't look down on his neighbor for having a career that has a tangential relationship to sex work.  She's not a prostitute, but she's treated as such.  It's when he comes to the defense of this woman that those around him start turning on him.

The rest of the film is almost looking at the different facets of the legal system, stressing the bias against the defendant regardless of actual crime.  Josef goes to court.  Everyone in the room isn't a peer; they are a judge.  They all laugh and he picks up that there's coaching going on as he stands up there fighting for his life.  Then there's the acknowledgment that money buys freedom.  Orson Welles's advocate character is housed in a grandiose mix between luxury and Victor Frankenstein's gothic home.  Welles as advocate cares little for Josef K.'s predicament so much as he is itching to show how much weight he can push around.  He's both put out by the scrawny Josef K and eager to impress.  At no point does it become about the trial.  It's instead a bunch of swagger.  He feeds his girlfriend to Josef K because he enjoys that she is disposable and that his life is so rich that he doesn't need this whelp of a man.  The same holds true for the artist.  The artist sees Josef K as a means to show his insight into a world stacked against him.  These are almost elements of theater.  Everything is a production and Josef K is the form of entertainment to the masses.

Let's talk about Anthony Perkins, a man whom I cannot separate from Psycho.  Perkins is perfect casting here, but as much as I adore Anthony Perkins, the man has shades of Norman Bates all over him.  I've now seen him in a few things.  Not everything, mind you.  But Anthony Perkins plays the put upon nice guy.  Often, like with Norman Bates, there is a real darkness to him.  To analyze Josef K. isn't a question of whether he did something or not, but more about the fact that the legal system doesn't respond to reasonable requests.  (There's something very Alice in Wonderland about the whole thing too.) Knowing that Perkins was gay and that his character is also trying to adapt to constantly shifting expectations of him is also almost a character beat.   Attractive women in this movie don't necessarily throw themselves at him, but find his entire situation sexual.  It's actually pointed out by the advocate.  Perkins had that same energy with Psycho.  This nice guy gets a little bit more attractive because there might be something insidious about him.  I'm not saying that Marion Crane found him attractive.  It's just that Norman found himself more attractive because of his relationship to Mother.

I can see Perkins loving this.  But I also feel bad that it's almost too in his wheelhouse.  He's got that stuttering nice guy with a secret thing down.  I could play two-second clips of this and Psycho and unless you had memorized both films, you could probably mistake one scene for another.  That's good casting, but I also want to see Perkins do something else.  It's my same feeling with Anthony Hopkins. Both actors have absolutely nailed what they do in their craft, but often tend to do variations of the same thing, regardless for what the role is.

The movie is good.  It's interesting.  I just don't know how watchable the movie is.  I didn't lie.  I would come home and know that I still had a chunk of The Trial left. That's probably not the best sign.  I enjoy this kind of stuff.  But I already have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.  (I'm ending this one the worst take.)