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Are there REALLY NO symbols in this film?

posted 17 years ago by deshovel
20 replies | jump to latest

Wells said that there were NO symbols in the whole movie, and because it was so stylistically baffling and abstract, I can't really argue that claim. But on second thought I submit that when K goes into the room where they're interrogating that one dude, close to the beginning, there IS a symbol: The swinging lamp.
That was the central image of Picasso's "Guernica", which was a sort of warning of fascism the same way "The Trial" was in its day. Is it a coincidence? Do you think it's a nod? or am I just being fascist?

Or was it in the book and I'm just being forgetful?

[–] dsgoorevitch 8 years ago

Very little was in the book that is in this movie. I believe Wells when he says there are no symbols in this or any other movie he ever made. His work was confined to the promulgation of a very narrow band of political ideology. That wouldn't admit symbols.

The novel, on the other hand, is a masterpiece that applies to all of us. The Trial itself is the great symbol. All of us are Joseph K. And the novel is also extremely funny as well as tragic. Few people get the joke.

This film is beautiful but useless trash. It's worse: it's one of the most obscene acts of cultural vandalism I've seen.