The peasant, the gate, the guardian: Kafka's 'Before the Law,' animated

September 13, 2015 8:07 PM

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.”

Franz Kafka's Before the Law, animated as a pinscreen prologue to Orson Welles' film adaptation of Kafka's The Trial (Pop Matters review), and a stand-alone "free interpretation" short titled The Guardian by N9ve Studios.

N9ve have uploaded a short "making-of" clip for The Guardian, as well as a number of similarly stylistic short animations (for example, Beautiful Coins, depicting a coin from each country in the Euro Zone) to their Vimeo account.

posted by filthy light thief (6 comments total)

For those who are wondering, a sharp-eyed reader on io9 caught the inscription above the doorway in The Guardian:

Pater omnis telesmi totius mundi est hic.

Or "Its power is perfected. If it is turned into earth." And they noted it comes from the Emerald Tablet, a cryptic tablet that is supposed to contain secrets for transmuting materials.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:13 PM on September 13, 2015

The io9 commenter took the translation from the wrong line; it should be "The father of all perfection in the whole world is here," which for some reason is missing from the 1613 translation.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 9:24 PM on September 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

Before the Law has also been made into a video game.
posted by unknot at 9:32 PM on September 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

A bit off-topic, but Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker, who made the pinscreen version attached to Welles's The Trial, also filmed some other shorts that might be of interest, like Gogol's "The Nose".
posted by Merzbau at 6:01 AM on September 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

I liked the Welles version; I disliked the N9ve Studios one, which takes it upon itself to draw out and "interpret" Kafka's perfect little parable. Thanks for an excellent post!
posted by languagehat at 8:05 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Recasting Before the Law as a carpe diem parable seems to totally miss the point. "Fuck the gatekeepers, I'll represent myself!" is an attitude the rarely works out for the gatekept. The real solution is to have the resources to obtain a warrior who can defeat the guardians on your behalf. Without those resources, justice will never come, so your only choice is to wait forever or walk away. Or maybe I'm just too cynical.
posted by WCWedin at 8:09 AM on September 14, 2015