THE CASTLE (DAS SCHLOSS)
Germany, 1971, 88 minutes, Colour.
Maximilian Schell.
Directed by Rudolf Noelte.
The Castle is a version of a short story by Franz Kafka. Once again, as in The Trial, the name of the central character is K. He is also searching for a bureaucrat named Kramm, utilising once again the letter K.
This brief film shows a young man coming to a village. He is to be an attendant at the castle overlooking the village. It is winter, snowing, the villagers are suspicious and do not understand why the castle needs someone to look after it. However, the plight of the young man is that he has to find the bureaucrats – finding himself in a tangle of anonymous bureaucracy. This is a familiar theme from the writings of Kafka. There are various visuals of this kind of bureaucratic claustrophobia, rooms filled with files, surreal dreams as the man tries to find his place.
There was another film version of The Castle in 1997, a much longer version, directed by Austrian Michael Haneke (Funny Games, The Piano Teacher, Cache).
One of the most celebrated versions of a Kafka novel was Orson Welles’ 1962 version of The Trial. Other plays and works of Kafka, like Metamorphosis, have been adapted for television. A portrait biography of Kafka was made by Stephen Soderbergh in the early 90s with Jeremy Irons.
1. For what audience was this film made? Was it meant as popular entertainment?
2. That was the overall impact of the film? Interest. entertainment. puzzle. questioning about the reality of life and society?
3, Was the film obviously a fable? About what? How was the film an allegory? Of what?
4. How important for the film and its impact were colour, its village location, the focus of attention and the visualising on the castle?
5, What did the castle stand for? Its look? Its significance in the village? What is the castle a symbol for? What kind of authority? The relationship between royalty and the ordinary people? The anonymous person inside the castle? Unseen authority? Impersonal relationship? The ignoring of the individual? The tangle of bureaucracy and its effect on people's lives? How is the film a fable of authority? Society and the ordinary people?
6. Was the land surveyor a real character or merely representing Everyman? His ambitions and hopes? His being employed by the castle? His work, his search for identity and identification? The anguish when his ambitions began to elude him? The meaningless of his life because of the authorities in the castle? An allegory of the meaninglessness of life?
7. The significance of the mayor in the film? His explanation of the bureaucracy, the history of previous land surveyors, his impact on the land surveyor?
8, The importance of the bedridden official at the end of the film? The significance of his story? The meaning for the allegory? Its impact on the land surveyor?
9. The family and the other members of the village? The effect of the castle on them? Their effect on the land surveyor? An allegory of relationships within life? The castle and visualising the possibility of permanent relationships?
10.The significance of authority from the film? The role of the state, control, the disregard of the individual. totalitarian impersonality?
11.The importance of stories being told by the characters? As explanations of the puzzle? As contributing further to the puzzle?
12.How abstract was the meaning of the film? Were symbols important for the audience to grasp its meaning? The emotional impact of the plight of the land surveyor? The uncertainty of the ending?
13. Was it important that Kafka did not finish this work? In this way, is it a symbol of the meaning of the story? An unfinished ending? The frustration of impersonal and unknown ending?
