What did he actually do that made those guys grab him, throw him down the edge, and throw a brick of dynamite at him?
Is his 'crime' actually explained, or was there never anything he actually did like his lawyer explains to him, when reverts to the story of the gate?
"how about... a royal flush!" *loren avedon kicks a cauldron of boiling water into the bad guys*
allegory answers to nobody.
shareWhy are you so interested in knowing his crime?
Can't you mind your own business? Or do you have something to hide?
This isn't going to play well with the authorities, you know. Still, it musted be noted. A record must be kept...
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Just stuff it in your ovular hole.
Ovular is a word! It just has nothing to do with ovals.
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"... when the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
I think one answer is that K. simply felt that he was guilty, and his universe acted accordingly.
shareWe'll never know what he did. That's the point of the film.
sharei think its all in what he says about how he took himself to the door - no one forced him to go there, and by his actions he BECAME somehow guilty, in some way
but yeh, its obviously not meant to be explained, like a Lynch picture, its probly more of a study of paranoia and self control, amongst other things.
AMAZING film though - kafka, told by welles - it HAD to be really
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The sexual guilt would have been all Anthony Perkins and not Kafka.
The state always finds reasons to execute intellectuals if merely for the crime of being too smart, and sticking out among throngs of drones with dead minds; which are preferred (as with American conservatives). The Cuban revolution, the Chinese cultural revolution, the Nazis, the Russian revolution and the slaughter in Cambodia all focused special attention on the cruel treatment and extermination of intellectuals.
K's crime is not important and is almost certainly fictional. The state executes to consolidate/strengthen/demostrate its own power. K's only 'crime' is that he is unlucky enough to be an intelligent citizen of this state.
Your references are far too stretching for the subject of this film Joseph K is not a great intellectual or political rebel in any way. See my other comment for what it is a far better metaphor for.
shareJosef K showed his crime... he was a subversive ideologue. All he had to do to gain favor again was to submit to the system... to compromise and relinquish his ideals.
If you read the book (and maybe bios of Kafka) Kafka was feeling a lot of guilt cause he wanted to sleep with lots of women, and break off his impending wedding that he felt trapt in. He felt guilty for that, and you can see the sexual guilt, along with the authorites trying to force thier conventional ideas on him, when he wanted to be an individual. So it has to do with that
Must get out of Alcatraz with all these men all over each other....Must get to San francisco...
I think you're wrong. If you understand that this film is about the inner conflict between pragmatism and idealism, then Josef's sole crime was that he was an idealist persisting at a time when idealism was losing ground to pragmatism.
This story takes place within a single man's mind. Le Process could be retitled "The Thought Process." These people aren't real.. what we are seeing is a battle within a person's own mind.
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I agree with TheHypnotron. I saw what was happening to him as an internal conflict, not something that was really happening. The first tip to me was how he was placed under arrest and yet wasn't taken into custody. He was still walking around free, going to work, etc. The whole movie plays out like a dream--or nightmare. I think the people in it represent parts of his mind (or his identity) struggling with each other.
Buffy: "Alright, I get it. You're evil. Do we have to chat about it all day?" -Amends
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K is guilty of having feelings of guilt. His own guilty feelings are the very "crime" he is guilty of.
He is a victim of the human condition.
I kind of identified with the guy. I guess that's why I interpret it as a reflection of his inner struggle--his feelings of guilt, mostly self-created, exaggerated and inappropriate. It's something I went through years ago. The movie plays like a dream to me. The people in it (other than him) don't seem real which is why I see the story as a fantasy and an illustration of what is happening in his "inner" world. Isn't this one of those movies where it's put together in such a way that it's kind of up to the individual audience member to interpret it in their own way? Maybe like "Persona"?
Buffy: "Alright, I get it. You're evil. Do we have to chat about it all day?" -Amends
"His own guilty feelings are the very "crime" he is guilty of."
This simple phrase cleared everything up for me, thanks.
Only innocent people have those feelings. A sociopath can pass a polygraph because they have no feelings.
shareYou have to read the book to get a clearer picturer, but as others have pointed out...that was Kafka's intention (to make any fact of a crime obscure, though the book is a little clearer in conveying the way in which his guilt & sense of doubt increases as the process proceeds).
The Trial is sort of a fictional outcome of Max Weber's theories of beauracracy. The story portrays how, as institutions grow & increase in size, complexity & power, individuals become subsumed under the power of these institutions (presumably The State in The Trial). Details of the crime, actual guilt or innocence, etc. become irrelevant as the supremacy of the bureaucracy reigns.
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You see, your post has actually a good reason to exists; your question is the same that i'd have probably asking myself right now, if I wouldn't have read the book before watching this movie. And that's why this movie (which I was really looking forward to) has disappointed me so much.
Unfotunately, almost like a Hitchcock production.
He did not do anything. It can now be viewed as a brilliant allegory for Zionism and the Zionist Apartheid State of Israel. A Palestinian under Israeli control can never get justice and is always guilty no matter the facts. Millions of people are locked in a colonialist maze of repression and brutality under the Zionist Israeli Kafkaesque insanity logic upon which the state and ideological regime is based.
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