It’s sad but true that I related to the main character, Joseph K. In Orson Welles’ cinematic version of Kafka’s The Trial (1962). It would be hyperbolic to say that I had a similar experience but I certainly had the same feeling of dealing with a labyrinthine and unknowable bureaucratic nightmare.
One such occasion was one fine day when I was called into the principal’s office after having taught my first class of the day. I was told to bring along a union rep. I was met by the principal, a vice principal and the school district’s associate superintendent for instruction. I was told that there had been a charge of sexual harassment against me and that I was too be suspended effectively immediately while an investigation was conducted. I was not told who had leveled the charge nor what I was alleged to have done or when or where.
I was then escorted to my classroom to collect my personal belongings. When I tried to turn off my computer I was blocked. A school safety officer drove me home.
I felt like the world had ended.
The next week was a living nightmare. Sleep was difficult. I spent hours trying to imagine who had accused me of what. I was on the phone constantly with the union president and the school district office. I felt like a pariah but didn’t know what I’d done to earn this awful feeling.
Six days after I was told of the accusation I was told that I had been cleared and that I could return to work. But I was still not told who had charged me of what. I was to learn that some of my female students had been interviewed about me and that my computer had been taken and my search history examined.
(Years later I was to learn that the accusation had been made by a female student who had a grudge against me for my role in a suspension that she’d earned. I also learned that that she’d leveled similar charges against other teachers. More than that I was told that the principal had been admonished for taking the girl’s accusation so seriously and that the principal had been told to apologize to me — she never did which is why I still take such great satisfaction in her having been fired.)
This was not the only — though certainly the worst — experience I had with the school district. Oh the stories I could tell and may yet.
One of the worst feelings we can have in life is not knowing what the hell is going on. You get a note from the principal that says “see me after school.” It could mean anything and the torment of not knowing what lasts until you enter the principal’s office. Having that feeling last for days is what The Trial captures so well.
While watching it I noted that there were stretches when I wasn’t paying attention to the dialogue. This can be a problem in trying to understand and appreciate a film. Not so with The Trial. After all much of the dialogue is circular, repetitive, slightly off, meant to obscure and confuse not inform. The film is more about the surrealism, the camera angles, the disorientation and confusion.
The Trial gives you a psychologically vertiginous feeling. The world is off kilter and it’s difficult to know your place in it. Or for that matter up from down, right from wrong. Joseph K is at the mercy of….he doesn’t know exactly what.
It is a masterpiece of direction by Welles, liberally borrowing from the German expressionist of three decades before. Too many people think that other than Citizen Kane all he directed was The Magnificent Ambersons — which the studio butchered. But in addition to The Trial he directed The Stranger, a terrific film in which he co-starred with Edward G Robinson, Chimes at Midnight his ode to the great bard, Touch of Evil, The Lady from Shanghai, F is for Fake and Othello, one of the better cinematic versions of a Shakespeare play.
The Trial wouldn’t be an easy watch for everyone but for some of us, it’s sadly familiar. Anthony Perkins starred as Joseph K and he captured a man struggling in unreality. The supporting cast includes Romy Schneider, Jeanne Moreau and Welles.
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