Dark – a review

In the desolate German town of Winden a child goes missing. While the authorities try to solve the case they stumble upon more questions than answers. A lot of those question have to do with the shady dealing of the local nuclear power plant that stood ground since 1953!

After Stranger Things the combination of mystery and nostalgia have taken quite a leap in popular televised fiction. The easy way of combining the two (something Stranger Things tries desperately to evade) is to bring in time travel. But how does one write such a story? Leave it up to the German entertainment industry to take it all a step further. To bring it to: Dark.

I really like this show. True, -in good Game of Thrones-fashion- it took me a while to get all the relationships and characters right in my mindset. But the season worked; that is, until the last episode.

I had to double-check these family relations because

–at one time- I was suspecting incest.

Like Game of Thrones the very first episode brings a lot of information to the table. But once you grasp it all (again, taking a minute to figure it all out) Dark, gleefully, makes it more difficult: The show brings in time travel and different actors playing younger versions of other characters.
In short it is a lot to wrap your mind around!

Dark is a science-fiction show that uses – in our current post-post-modernist time- each and every trope used in previous science fiction/time travel stories to its benefit.
But that doesn’t make this story: ‘been there, done that!’. In fact, in the hands of ‘Ze Germans’ it creates a rather impressive work of –would I dare say it-: art.

Repeating something doesn’t make it unoriginal
Being critical one could say that Dark has paid close attention to other hit mystery-shows like Twin Peaks and Stranger Things (and movies/books like: Miss Perigee home for peculiar children and Looper). This is undoubtedly true. Filling the bleak -constantly cold and raining- town of Winden with an array of unique characters who are all keeping secrets is the blueprint that Twin Peaks left behind.

Then there is the whole 80s vibe this show plays with (a dartboard with the bullseye pushed out.
Satanism and the way that was thing back then.

The fact that Germany has (in reality) several mines filled to the brim with radioactive waste. It’s about time we shoot those barrels into space.

And several others I probably missed.
This is a direct result of the current nostalgia-hype the western world has been living in for the last ten years (it started around Super 8 and the Indiana Jones-sequel and came to fruition with Stranger Things).
So one could definitely say that Dark doesn’t offer anything new.
This is absolutely true!
But me, being a person who has seen over two-hundred sci-fi-time-travel-movies (and series)- argue this: We are currently living in 2018. Every little way of telling stories has been done before. In fact it is quite astonishing that moviemakers still manage to find some unique way of telling tales.

Like screenmovies as Unfriended.

There’s nothing wrong with reusing a storytelling technique or motive and making it your own. Quentin Tarantino lives by that motto.

I argue, that, concerning Dark. As a show it uses various elements from famous international predecessors but at the same time it places a big stamp on it which reads: made in Germany. And that’s what makes it special: It’s a German show all the way through!

German nostalgia
In a sense it is fitting that this tale –which has a large chunk taking place in the 1980s- was made in Germany.
Dark underlines its country of origins every chance it gets. There’s the obvious European acceptance of nudity (or homosexuality). The critical stance on Communism and religion. The ‘out of the way’ this show goes not to have certain characters in the past talk about their experiences during the second world war. Or in fact making it a (plot) point that Germany has a multitude of old bomb shelters.

But most of all Dark highlights that Germans are a rather nostalgic kind of people (just google 'Ostalgie').
It’s been written about before by various scholars how Germans use mainstream media to accept or learn from history. Movies like Er is wieder da, der Untergang or Holocaust managed for German people to come to (somewhat) terms with their part in the bloodiest chapter of the 20th century. Then there are movies like Goodbye Lenin and now Dark that look back at Germany just before the re-unification. A period in history wherein the eyes of the world were set on this European country.

Everything happened in Germany back then: music, art, spying and sabotage, terrorism. And this exiting rumbling decade eventually concluded in the joining of the halves of the country. Germany and nostalgia go hand in hand as it were. So setting a time travel story there…
It’s as German as it can get.

Why do the people in this show keep on picking up dead birds?

Maybe it’s because I had a cat that I can’t understand them  – no thank you!

On another note: what is it with German cinema and kidnapping/ Childmurder?

Es geshah am hellichten tag, M. Why is that?

Timetravel – yeah baby!
I love, LOVE time travel. It’s one of the nerdy things about me that I am more than willing to admit to (I won’t admit to the fact that I also enjoy growing vegetables in my garden).

Overall, in movies (and TV-shows) there are three forms of time travel which can each be explained by ‘the grandfather paradox’
The grandfather paradox is the idea that you travel back in time and kill your own grandfather. With grandfather dead you would never been born in the first place to travel back in time and kill your grandfather: thus a paradox is created. Three theories that explain this conundrum:

Explanation one: time ceases to exist. The whole of the universe collapses on itself. Game over!

Though I do think this is a bit arrogant to assume that one little misguides speck of stardust can cause eternity to tumble down.

But it is something movies like to play with.

Explanation two: You simply cannot kill your grandfather. The gun jams, you kill the wrong person. You name it. The past cannot be altered.

Explanation three: You created an alternative timeline the minute you time travelled. So go right ahead and kill the man since you’ll still exist in your own timeline anyway.

All three of these explanations are used in movies all the time. The trick is to pinpoint what theory a movie uses. The time machine is a big fan of number 3, while its remake toys with number two. Back to the future, then, is a big believer in number one. So where does this place Dark?

Dark uses the notion of an unchangeable past. In that sense the title is rather fitting: it’s not very pleasant to realize that whatever happens – you can’t change it.

I loved the time-jokes: 2019 mobile phones - nobody answers.

1986 normal phones -everybody picks up (but nobody answers the door).

A glitch in the matrix
A glitch in the Matrix is in Dark explained (as it was in the Matrix) as having a Déjà vu in a simulation.

But currently the term is also used for the Mandela-effect. Now before I delve into this I need to explain something about myself: I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist. Nessie could be real or not. Bigfoot could be real or not. JFK could have been shot by one man or twelve. And Hitler might have survived ‘til 1953 (or 1956 depending on the theory).

But I do enjoy reading about it. It’s a what if scenario. A conspiracy theory is a puzzle you will never find a satisfying answer to.

But the Mandela-effect is a bit different to me. Because I actually experienced this effect. In short the effect is that lots of people on this earth remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s and not in 2013. They remember it vividly. Some even claim that they used to have the news coverage of his burial on VHS-cassette- which became ‘magically’ erased.
The same goes for other things like: berenstain bears, sex and the city and monopoly (so yes – usually it involves pop-culture).
So why would people all over the world not only remember things differently? But also the exact same different thing?

This is where the theory becomes supernatural: that somewhere around 2001 an alternative timeline was created in which we now live. Yet some (special) people still remember stuff from the previous timeline; a glitch in the Matrix.

Now, for, my experience is that I’m willing to swear that I saw a news item about the death of the actor Richard Chamberlain. Yet, the dear chap is still alive (quite a shock when I suddenly saw him in I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry).

So what is this? The news not checking the facts? Aliens? Government influence? Mr. Smith having a laugh? Or maybe, down to earth, it’s a form of mass hysteria or just something neurological – the way people remember things from their childhood differently.

I don’t know the answer. Although I assume it to be a trick of the brain if not for that fact that I’m pretty sure that Aliens won’t bother changing the name of the Berenstein bears.
But I do enjoy reading about it. As I do about Nessie and Bigfoot.

No more dillydallying: The actual review
Like Game of thrones before it Dark’s biggest challenge for the audience is not the twists and turns of the plot but rather keeping the families apart. I for one had to take a second to write down the various characters for the relationships to become clear.
But once you’ve wrapped your mind around that you have a marvellous time-travel mystery to figure out.

There isn’t a real main character in this show. It’s rather more a collection of several people who come together in the end. Jonas and Ulrich are the characters with the most screen time but even they are sometimes skipped over for an episode or two to focus on the other going-ons.

Still each and every actor brings his or her best to the table no matter how small the part is (like Mikkel’s brother not having a lot to do for instance). What I found refreshing is that basically everybody is a bit unlikable in this series – even the children.

A nice thought Dark plays with is not the fact that parents don’t try to keep their children safe.

But rather that the children themselves are too pigheaded to listen.

Also, why is it that psychiatrists in movies always have the greatest personal problems?

But that does make them full people. Hardly anybody smiles – except at the expense of another it seems. This is something the depressing tale needs.

Depressing Dark certainly is. The mere premise requires several children getting murdered in this show (not to mention the bird and sheep autopsies). It’s a bold startingpoint that Dark accepts without sugar-coating it.

The first five episodes then are all about stacking questions. Only then the show slowly turns to answering them. Good characters become villains and villains become good characters. But – by that time- you also start rolling your eyes about the secrets people keep keeping from each other.

That’s the only true issue I have with this show: the stretched out time it takes before answering the suspicions of the viewer. Usually bench watching a show has the additional benefit that you don’t have enough time to figure things out on your own. However, in Dark this was/is not the case. More than once I had one of the sub-mysteries figured out episodes before the characters did. Not because I’m such a brilliant person but rather because Dark doesn’t offer a lot of alternative possible answers. Dark is pretty straightforward in its solving of the mysteries, thus  it becomes frustrating if you know the answers before the characters figure it out.

Dark also tends to get a bit highbrow at time.

Referencing Goethe (his famous novel of course: Faust which featured a pact with the devil)

or Ariadne betrayal of her father as she helps Theseus through the labyrinth.

But then again it never feels forced.

Dark is well shot and directed. There are nice little visual clues here and there –like a book cover reading ‘1983’ in the screen at the precise moment when the time travel plotline is introduced. Or the continuous flickering of the lights at specific times. And, of course, the cinematography makes good use of the (in joke) that each and every episode somebody enters the cave. Using the camera to highlight disorientation and claustrophobia as a means of underlining the character’s motivation works wonders.

I do wish to take my hat off to the Winden police department; searching a cave but not finding a box full of lanterns?

I especially enjoyed the grey bleak colour pallet this show uses. Dark isn’t a happy tale (and like Seven it’s constantly raining to underline the hopelessness) and it doesn’t let the viewer forget that.

In the end Dark ends with a bit of a unneeded twist. This is understandable from a continuing perspective. But it is also a bit frustrating as certain questions remain unanswered. This first season of Dark doesn’t end all wrapped up. There are strands left – underused characters (the 2019 teenagers) and some mysteries that haven’t been fully answered.

What are the lingering question then? For me the following (slight spoiler):

I won't put a spoiler tag before these because nobody who hasn't seen the show
will be able to understand what I'm talking about.

• How did the boy suddenly vanish?
• How does the redhead girl and her money box fits into it all?
• Is there a character in 2019 from the past (or future)?
• Who is Noah really?
• What’s with that pocket watch that said: Charlotte?
• Is there a way to prevent all the kids from dying?
• How many kids died?
• What happened to that policeman’s eye?

And many, many others.

Conclusion
Dark is German television at its best. It takes the tropes of other (American) time travel shows and movies and makes it its own. Dark is a German science fiction story that doesn’t shy away to show some true darkness in the hearts of men.