The new version of The Trial is astonishingly relevant. In one of the film’s best scenes, Josef goes to see a painter in the hopes that the artist, who does portraits of powerful judges, can help his case. Josef notices that one of the paintings depicts Lady Justice, usually blindfolded and with scales balanced in one hand, with no base and with wings on her feet. Lady Justice has now become Artemis, goddess of the hunt.

It’s a powerful metaphor for the problems in so much of our justice system, our punitive social justice culture, and a media that hunt prey down rather than working to uncover all the facts calmly. Take, for example, the potential indictment of former President Donald Trump for allegedly paying hush money to bury an affair. The charges have the media and the Manhattan district attorney making a case that elevates a campaign misdemeanor into a federal crime. Whatever you think of Trump — and I have always been ambivalent — the convoluted case against him, with its byzantine details, seems like a put-up job out of Kafka. The only thing more confusing than this case is the Steele dossier, the garbage opposition research package that was used to impeach Trump even though everyone involved with it knew it was based on bad sources and rabbit holes.

In my own personal experience, the parallels to Kafka have been stark and literal.