The Trial (1962)

Miss Burstner and Josef K

Objective Review:

     Shortly after the police leave, Miss Burstner arrives home and is confronted by Josef in the hallway. They have a brief, awkward and Josef accidentally admits that he knows when she is usually home. After this admission, Miss Burstner retreats to her room, him wishing her a happy birthday and she bidding him a mild goodnight. The scene is intentionally made more awkward by the camera focusing along the wall. Following Miss Burstner, Josef knocks sharply on her door and begins to enter, only to find her in her nightgown. He stammers an apology and slinks back to his own room, but the moment his door shuts, increasingly loud knocking is heard. He opens the door to find Miss Burstner, and he attempts to apologize for not waiting for her to answer her own door. Miss Burstner leans against the doorframe, Josef standing behind her, and asks if he’s getting ideas because she knocked on his door, which he refutes, asking if she’d like to come in, as she did knock. She says she cannot come into his room because their landlord wishes to throw her out and always has one ear open. Miss Burstner flops on her bed while Josef lingers in the doorway, during their discussion, he closes the door and she demands he leave it open. Josef sits on the bed, Miss Burstner coming closer, lying next to him. He then kisses her, and Miss Burstner accepts his affections, saying she thinks he’s crazy, that he’s been out drinking. He then tells her he is under arrest, and she suggests that it was a dream. He points out her mother’s pictures, on their side from being handled by the police, but she does not notice their disheveled state, and asks that he leave her mother out of it. Suddenly, she shouts that it might be political, demanding that he leave her out of it, asking what he’s doing in her room. He stammers that she invited him and that he tried to leave her out of it, but they had begun to mess with her mother’s photographs. She rushes to them, furious, and when he says the police were the ones who had looked at them, she shoves him through the connecting door to his room, demanding that he get out, stay out, and leave her alone, even after he’s out of her room. She then shuts the door firmly behind him.

Reaction:

     For me, the overall feel of the film was awkward and confused. It seemed to be made so deliberately, suggested by the choice of a gay actor to play Josef K, the disorienting camera angles, and the unconventional use of focus. It is a film meant to cause thought rather than to be instantly popular. It left me with a melancholy feeling, somewhere between hopelessness and confusion.

Interpretation:

     Post-modernism claims that rationality and logic are not important to attaining knowledge and that knowledge can be contradictory (Williams, 2005). This is a key component to The Trial, where even the accused doesn’t know what he’s accused of. The actions of Josef and Miss Burstner during her discussion with Josef only seem to further this theory.

     We are introduced to two Josefs in this scene, to the idea that knowledge can be contradictory (Kilgore, 2001). The first is the stammering, awkward person we saw during the police scene. When he stops Miss Burstner in the hall, he hesitates in his speech, not even managing to tell her that the police were in her room, which seems to be why he stopped her. It is this Josef who apologizes too much and admits to feeling constantly guilty, even when he hasn’t done anything. The second Josef is an entirely new person to the viewer. He barges into Miss Burstner’s room, shuts the door when they are alone in her room, and kisses her without fear of rejection. We are given two sets of knowledge to work with, two Josefs to compare. This lasts throughout the rest of the film. This holds with the view that there is no single, definable 'self,' that we change depending on who we interact with and the situation (Bammi).

     Miss Burstner’s reactions during this scene are devoid of rationality and logic, as Williams suggests all actions are. Although she seems offended when Josef tells her that he knows when she usually comes in and could easily be furious that he burst into her room without permission, she seems to forget these things the moment Josef answers his door. She curls up against the doorframe and asks if he’s getting ideas because she knocked on his door, making no mention that he thought it appropriate to walk into her room unannounced when she was undressing. When he agrees to not speak of himself, she snaps at him, indicating that she’s not afraid to raise her voice when necessary, but she does not confront him on his rudeness. When he invites her into his room, she refuses, claiming that the landlady already wanted to throw her out and that she could not give her a reason to do so, yet she allows Josef to follow her into her room. She orders him to leave the door open, but says nothing when he shuts it the second time. He tells her that he is under arrest and she seems not to believe him, accusing him of being drunk or dreaming. He points out that her mother’s pictures are on their sides as proof, but she seems not to notice. She doesn’t seem to realize that his arrest would have to be by the police. She begins screaming, asking why he’s dragging her into his trouble and asking why he’s in her room, although she had no protests to him being in her room before, even kissing him. It is only when he specifically mentions the police and that they handled her mother’s pictures that she reacts, shoving him through the connecting door into his own room and continuing to scream at him to get out and leave her alone. Her actions do not make sense from one moment to the next, following the theory that actions do not cause specific reactions (Kilgore).

     Kilgore asserts that knowledge is tentative and fragmented, and not always rational; that it is socially constructed and contextual. Miss Burstner’s actions seem to agree with this. Rather than piecing together Josef’s story from the bits of knowledge she has – he is under arrest, her mother’s pictures, and his needing to appear before a commission – he must specifically state that the police are involved before she understands. Instead, she uses her context to put together a story that Josef repeatedly refutes. She is just coming home, drunk and tired from her nightclub, and when he says he’s under arrest, she thinks he’s drunk or was asleep. Rather than using a rational perspective, she uses her personal context to create a story that makes the most sense to her. Postmodernism suggests that we all do this. There is no one truth, that Josef is being charged with a specific crime, that the police came, and that he is under arrest. There is only contextual truth. The rest of the movie furthers this notion.

James Williams, Understanding Poststructuralism (Acumen, 2005).

Deborah Kilgore, Critical and Postmodern Perspectiveson Adult Learning, 2001

Dr. Vivek R. Bammi, Postmodernism and Theory of Knowledge