Netflix
Highlights: Babylon Berlin, Outlaw King
Babylon Berlin
Netflix has some truly amazing
content. Let me highly recommend this
German dramatic series set in 1929 that is the most expensive non-English
language series ever made. There is a great deal more information about it
available online through the official website https://www.babylon-berlin.com/en/overview-babylon/
and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_Berlin.
Despite a very busy volunteer schedule I’ve managed to view all 16 episodes of
the first two seasons. The third is currently in production.
Two
central characters are Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch), a police detective
transferred from Cologne assigned to a vice squad, and Charlotte Ritter (Liv
Lisa Fries), a hostess in a nightclub and stereotypist who goes to work for
him. Gereon is a First World War veteran
who needs drugs to calm his nerves.
Charlotte’s home is a squalid family flat. There are many more characters in the
richly-conceived intersecting storylines, one of which centres on a train from
Soviet Russia carrying illicit poison gas and a supposed secret fortune in
gold. The political atmosphere—the
doomed Weimar republic before the Great Depression and triumph of National
Socialism—is fraught and feverish: one of decadence and despair, extremes and
extortion, Communist and Trotskyite intrigue, violence in the streets, rearmament
and fascist plots, and much more. Not
only are the performances outstanding across the board, the production team
(helmed by master filmmaker Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries, and Henk
Handloegten) have created an entire world that brings this intense febrile
historical epoch to life as never before on the modern screen.
The
result truly deserves that overused term awesome. The historical complexity also puts it above
my previous best-ever television series, the Danish “Borgen” which has a
contemporary political setting. I can’t
wait for the next episode.
Outlaw King (UK/U.S.)
The Toronto International Film Festival
has a history of dubious choices for its opening night gala presentations,
getting scooped by Venice and Telluride for Oscar-worthy fare. In some ways this made-for-Netflix
production, a “big bloody mud-and-honour epic” as one fairly positive review
calls it, is no exception. The setting
is 14th century Scotland and the subject is Robert the Bruce (Chris
Pine) who takes up the Scottish crown in the wake of the martyrdom of the rebel
William Wallace (see Mel Gibson’s Braveheart),
rallying the clans to repulse the evil royal English overlords … which of
course they do after terrible reprisals.
No
expense has been spared on the production, helmed by Scottish director David
Mackenzie and shot on Scottish locations. Pine is fine as the warrior king and
there are a few tender even racy scenes with his wife, a goddaughter of the
English monarch Edward I who expires en route to the ultimate battle showdown.
The focus however is on the action of swords and savagery, guts and gore. Worth watching, but only if you have the
stomach for that sort of thing.
Comments
Post a Comment