The beetle

Through the film both Joe and Joi undergo a transition, as they each become more empathically aware and “human”. Each with their own final most spiritual moment.

There is reflected in Nabokov’s writing on Kafka’s “The Metamophosis”.

The beauty of Kafka’s and Gogol’s private nightmares is that their central human characters belong to the same private fantastic world as the inhuman characters around them, but the central one tries to get out of that world, to cast off the mask, to transcend the cloak or the carapace … the absurd central character belongs to the absurd world around him but, pathetically and tragically, attempts to struggle out of it into the world of humans

Nabokov goes on to suppose that the insect that Gregor Samsa is transformed into had a hidden fantastical element, of which neither Gregor nor Kafka was fully aware.

Commentators say cockroach, which of course does not make sense. […] he has a tremendous convex belly divided into segments and a hard rounded back suggestive of wing cases. In beetles these cases conceal flimsy little wings that can be expanded and then may carry the beetle for miles and miles in a blundering flight. Curiously enough, Gregor the beetle never found out that he had wings under the hard covering of his back. (This is a very nice observation on my part to be treasured all your lives. Some Gregors, some Joes and Janes, do not know that they have wings.)

Nabokov’s annotated copy of “The Metamorphosis”.

The beetle figure here is a revelatory image to Nabokov, representing our own often unrecognised abilities to transcend what we normally perceive as reality, and discover higher truths and meanings.

One viewer has discovered a vintage VW beetle hidden in the film, but there’s a more visceral moment too.

When Joe first meets Dr Ana Stelline she is weaving the memory of a lush forest, absorbed in the details of one of its inhabitants.

A beautiful, iridescent, green beetle.

Ana and K meet.

With it’s doors both raised, K’s vehicle is also evocative of the beetle motif. This publicity image for Empire magazine is particularly resonant.

This beetle has wings.

Coming back to The Trial, the novel is bookended on each side by a significant date. We enter the world on Josef K’s 30th birthday, and leave it when he is killed “Like a dog” on his 31st birthday.

We don’t see any obvious indication inside the film of what day our Joe K is left bleeding out under the falling snow, but we do have some other reflections.

As K and Ana are talking, she works on the memory of a birthday party. The candles on the cake illuminate the scene, and as they are blown out the picture falls into a very final kind of darkness.

There’s a further clue if we step outside the fourth wall. The release date of the film is 6th Oct. In some sense this is K’s birthday.

The 06–10–21 date carved into the tree and the wooden horse is 6th Oct, 2021. (Reading the date in European, not American style.)

The allusion here could be the open possibility that perhaps K actually is Deckard’s son, and Ana’s twin brother.

A double helix, double twist. Cells. Interlinked.

Conversely, read the date in American style, as 10th June, and we have the Zodiac sign of Gemini, The Twins.

Castor and Pollux, the twins, granted shared Godhood in death.

The two identical DNA records that K finds couldn’t possibly be a one boy and one girl, though, that’d be impossible, right? Actually no. Monozygotic boy/girl twins have been recorded, in exceedingly rare circumstances. During development of two identical male twins, one twin loses a Y chromosome and becomes male.

In cases where this occurs, the female child will present Turner Syndrome. Stelline mentions the reason for her isolation being as a “compromised immune system”, which fits with one of the symptoms of Turner Syndrome.

It’s also worth watching the birthday memory scene carefully. The very last child introduced seems noticeably different to the others, much younger, and less healthy. Another symptom of Turner Syndrome is growth defect in infants.

Turner Syndrome is also typically characterized by infertility. If K and Ana are twins, then any further descendants would need to be from K, not Ana. Mariette, perhaps?

Both K and the audience are led to believe that his memory was an implant, of Ana’s creation. However we only have Fresya’s word that only a single female child was born, and at the time she tells him that she’s motivated by needing to use him to kill Deckard.

In Luv’s words to Lt. Joshi. “You’re so sure. Because [s]he told you. Because we never lie?”