Product Details

• Actors: Kyle MacLachlan, Anthony Hopkins, Jason Robards, Juliet Stevenson, Polly Walker
• Directors: David Hugh Jones
• Writers: Franz Kafka, Harold Pinter
• Producers: Ann Wingate, Carolyn Montagu, Geoffrey Paget, Kobi Jaeger, Louis Marks
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Fox Lorber
• VHS Release Date: October 16, 1997
• Run Time: 120 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303093345
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #266,787 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

On the morning of his 30th birthday, senior bank clerk Josef K. is put under arrest by men who refuse to identify themselves. He's not taken into custody, and nobody will--or even can--tell him the charges against him. Josef refuses to take it seriously, and thus begins his descent into the mad vagaries of a court system that is as enigmatic as it is ominous. This BBC coproduction of the Franz Kafka book features a screenplay by Harold Pinter (Turtle Diary, The French Lieutenant's Woman) that starts out full of wit and menace, but loses steam in the second half and delivers a flat and confusing ending. Kyle MacLachlan is perfectly cast as a sort of yuppie Josef K. who's so self-involved and complacent that he cannot express proper outrage at the injustice. Although he's second-billed, Anthony Hopkins's role as the priest is more of a cameo. Polly Walker and Alfred Molina (a standout as the court painter, Titorelli) both seem to get Kafka's cosmic joke. Beautifully filmed in Prague. --Geof Miller

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as Orson's!, November 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Trial [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Whilst this was nowhere near as good as the 1963 version it wasn't too bad either. It appears from other reviews that people were bagging this simply because they failed to understand it. Kafka isn't supposed to be accessable. He is dense, sophisticated and surreal. He is also riotously funny, although many miss his humour. As for the end of The Trial (which is, in my humble opinion, the greatest novel written this century, and probably never could be done justice by a film), you are not supposed to understand what was going on (K didn't either! ). That is the whole point. The Trial is, amongst many other things, a scathing examination of the meaninglessness of bureaucracy. I dare say if you persist with either the book or the film, but particularly the book, you will be greatly rewarded.

All in all this is a very good, albeit not great, film. In future fellow reviewers, don't bag a film just because you don't understand it!

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great move--TERRIBLE DVD, April 4, 2002

By 

c b prescott (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Trial (DVD)

I give the movie five stars. The DVD, one (see below). I won't focus much on the merits of the film aside from saying that the story of the film is one of the most important works of the twentieth-century and is central to the modern, and post-modern, human experience. I saw this movie at the Angelika in New York when it came out. One of Hollywood's crimes was not giving it a distribution deal in the U.S. I have to admit that, the first time I saw it, I was somewhat disappointed by the portrayals in general. However, I hadn't read the novel in several years despite being a Kafka devotee. I reread it yet again and later viewed the film on video tape. The more I watched it, the more I realized what a wonderful job Harold Pinter did with the screenplay.

Now, as far as the DVD itself goes, this is one of the WORST transfers I have ever seen. Thanks go to the folks at Fox Lorber for another disappointing product. I think my original VHS copy had better image quality than this. Furthermore, as another reviewer notes, this film is beautifully photographed, yet the DVD is full screen only. The principals of Fox Lorber should be locked up for not releasing this in widescreen.

As for the extras? Yeah, right. There is a chapter selection function. How's that? There's not even a general menu, no trailers, interviews, etc. Nothing. Poor ole Franz. Still not being treated properly after all these years.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's an allegory!!, August 8, 2001

By 

Nathan Andersen "film lover, philosophy profe... (Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Trial [VHS] (VHS Tape)

At some point in your life you begin to question all of the reasons you used to give yourself to explain why you do what you do. Not only that, you discover that other people, who you thought were on your side are really standing on the sidelines judging you. You are, in other words, on trial: you need to justify your way of life not only to yourself but to others. What brings this on, perhaps, is the recognition of your own mortality, or the recognition that your ambitions may never be realized because your future depends upon others who have little interest in your concerns. This is really what Kafka's novel _The Trial_ is about: it is an "existentialist" allegory, where the "trial" stands for the fact that you find yourself at some point, unexpectedly, needing to account for and justify your life, but it is never quite clear what (if anything) you have done wrong, who it is that you have to justify yourself to or why.

This film version of Kafka's novel is particularly nice, for its portrayal of what Sartre would call a "bad faith" response to this situation. Kyle McLaughlin is perfect as a brash, arrogant young man who has begun to question his life and has begun to see the eyes of others who judge him harshly -- but who refuses to take his situation totally seriously. He turns to others for help: the law, an artist, a priest, but fails to really even heed their advice to the degree it appears to warrant (deciding, for example, to flirt with the seductive nursemaid of his lawyer, rather than listen to his counsel).

The end doesn't seem to me to be at all puzzling or obscure (as several others have suggested in their reviews of the film), when the film as a whole is "read" as an allegory of life and the despair of a universe where there is no fixed meaning. It turns out, in fact that his situation is much more serious than he has been treating it: he will die an ignominious death ("like a dog" as he says). Just prior to death, he glimpses something in a window -- in terms of the allegory, perhaps, he has an insight into the possible "meaning of it all" -- and yet the insight is only partial, or transitory. It does not save him -- and then it is all over, as suddenly and unexpectedly as it began.