The ending *Spoiler*
I had 2 questions but one was already answered upon further searching.
Other question is, was K. about to throw the dynamite? Because I remember he picked something up off the ground before the explosion.
I have looked closely, and K does pick up the dynamite in order to throw it back. Welles then cuts to a long shot of the field. There is a slight pause while we hear K's defiant laughter. Then - the explosion. We don't know if K avoided the explosion, or not. His laughter is cut short and the tragic tones of the music end the movie...
shareYou sure he picked up the dynamite?
I looked as close as i could but - although the scene sequence suggests so - it doesn't look like dynamite in his hand... it looks empty or at least it must be something smaller like a stone. I wonder if this is of importance, as i said, if you only see the scene once you tend to think its the dynamite he picks up so i suppose this is what Welles wants the audience to see/think.
The cut is very confusing... it seems as if K. was about to throw the dynamite back at his "executioners" but as mentioned i cannot really see it in his hands and secondly several seconds pass after this scene, time enough for him to throw but nothing seems to happen, only his crazy laughter being heard...
one critic writes that K manages to kill his executioners (and himself) but to me the shot doesn't suggest that at all...
"The Trial" is filled with weird, jarring cuts. He picks up the dynamite, Welles tricks us into thinking he will throw it, and then it cuts to a long shot of the explosion. So he basically commits suicide. It is very confusing though. The end of "Touch of Evil" has some jarring editing as well.
EDIT- it actually looks like a stone he picks up. As though he's about to toss a rock at the two goons.
"Rape is no laughing matter. Unless you're raping a clown."
So he basically commits suicide.
Yeah, this always baffled me. As a fan of the original Kafka novel I recall that it originally ended with Joseph K. getting stabbed to death in the pit by the two henchmen.
I suspect that Welles only ended the film with an explosion to make it more exciting and commercial. Don't get me wrong- The Trial is one of my favorite films and I love it to death- but I wish Welles had been more faithful to Kafka's ending.
In his review of the film, Roger Ebert makes a point that explosions never happen in Kafka's stories anyway, as they are too unsubtle. But Welles' "narration" of the end credits still cheers me up.
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"What I want to know is how we're going to stay alive this winter." share
I've never read the book, but Kafka's ending does sound much better.
Welles sets the scene up really well. There's a nice sense of desperation when the henchmen undress K, laying him down in the ditch and holding the knife over him. It's a very quiet and almost voyeuristic scene. We get a sense of K's acceptance.
But then the whole rediculous dynamite thing comes into play. It not only undermines the mood, but reverses it completely. A sort of triumph or power in death. But I guess that's what Welles was going for.
"Welles' "narration" of the end credits still cheers me up."
Yeah, his voice is amazing. I was a big Transformers fan as a kid, so I forever associate Welles with the voice of Unicron. The line at the end of the film always makes me smile: "this film was written and directed by me....I am Orson Welles."
"Rape is no laughing matter. Unless you're raping a clown."
I thought it summed up the story well in the sense that when this idealist finally does decide to Do Something Big about his restrained existence, he fails and tragically blows himself up. It's like any human individual going through the trials and tribulations of life, the processes of life if you will, and it's continuously being hinted (by a hinting hammer) and addressed that it won't work, it's too idealistic, it's not practical, it's the way 'everyone' does it, join the rest of the dare I say sellouts, the person might try to alter their way, the person isn't a total dumbass, (might revert or regress and go deeper into their idealism) but if the person does try to act like someone else, a pacifist finally picking up a gun, an illiterate person finally grabbing a novel, a person who only wears light colours finally picking up a black jacket, what happens, their life ends because they fail at the 1 out of a million things they attempted. Shouldn't have tried it, regardless of the strain, should have continued on their path, whatever it was.
I never think about the future, it comes soon enough