Welles's visual compositions, with their sets of a jaw-dropping grandeur, burst through the screen to evoke an oppressively incomprehensible system of edicts and constraints. And who better to reveal the system's evil genius than Welles, the golden boy turned Hollywood martyr? He plays the sybaritic attorney as, in effect, an imperious yet insecure director whose dialogue seems made for a megaphone, and turns Josef K. into a rebellious actor who defies the machine and needs to learn his lesson.
Richard Brody
January 28, 2015