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East Gorteau22261 Posts
Zealously's Gushing DARK Review
A man lives three lives. The first is ends with the loss of naivety. The second ends with the loss of innocence. The third, with the loss of life itself.
This review contains mild spoilers
It should come as no surprise to anyone who has given Netflix's German original even the most cursory of glances that even a throwaway sentence, spoken by what I consider to be one of the most powerful characters in the history of serialized storytelling, should come to have such literal and thematic relevance to the beyond convoluted story's conclusion. From its very onset, we are subjected to an onslaught of mysteries large and small. Some push themselves forcefully to the centers of our minds while others remain in the periphery, window dressing for a story that only grows in complexity and power as it goes. Thirty-three dead sheep and thirty-three dead birds. Threes and trinities abound, but not until the very end are we given full insight into their significance. Not a scene is wasted on pointless symbolism (even if much feels obscure at first glance), and when it comes down to it (at the close of the show's final season), I find myself struggling to think of anything that really went awry.
Let's start at the beginning.
If it was unclear before this point, I really struggle to put the essence of this show into words. It challenges genre, if nothing else then because it uses it sci-fi components to tell its story more effectively than most sci-fi originals. It never gets very bogged down in the how. It has more important things to do.
What is it about? It starts with a suicide and a cryptic letter and a boy gone missing, but from the very first frame we know that all is not so simple. To those that have asked when I've gushed about "this thing on Netflix", I have described it as an intermingling of small-town family drama (and it is, at its most vitriolic and deadly core) and time travel. But like any really memorable story, the shell doesn't reveal very much about the core. Avengers: Endgame did time travel. Fuller House does family drama. That's not really saying much. It's the kind of story that, when you try to pitch it to a friend, they'll either be sold before you need to explain any further, or they'll nod politely before commencing their fourth re-watch of Parks and Recreation. I don't think there's middle ground. Likewise for the friend who obsessively checks Instagram when watching shows. If they ask you for a third time who H.G Tannhaus is, or who is married to who, politely tell them it isn't for them (or crack open their skull with a crowbar, your choice).
At its core, DARK is an exploration of fate, free will, and a generational battle against determinism, of a small group of people struggling to be free. They are pawns in a game of chess played out by God, and cruellest of all: they know of their predicament. One is destined to watch their own descent into depravity and the abandonment of their own moral code. Another, to watch their child die again and again, helpless across time and space to change it. The German town of Winden, dominated by its secretive nuclear power plant, is a black hole from which nothing can escape. And DARK, stripped bare, is about the struggle to break a self-perpetuating cycle of agony. A story of forbidden love taken to its very extreme.
Season 3, tying the show (in so far as such a thing is possible) neatly into a knot, brings the conflict between competing schools of thought to a harrowing climax. It poses a simple question for the viewer that becomes ever harder to answer as time goes by: who is really in the right? A dichotomy is presented: break the order of things and plunge everything into darkness where we know nothing of what lies beyond, or preserve the order at all costs, ensuring life goes on in heartless cycles where every last person is forced into roles they resent to safeguard the very force that has shattered their lives to begin with.
The deeper we sink into DARK's proverbial muck, the more hopeless it seems. Neither option appears palatable. In fact, they're both (in the words of our main protagonist) shit. Is it really possible to win when your enemy, at the heart of it, is time itself? If, by some trick of fate or retrocausality we are nudged into a course of action designed to prevent the current state of things, it seems we have already lost. How can that which is predetermined change?
It's a haunting question, and it lays bare the fragility of our concept of free will when, as we quickly discover upon watching DARK's cast play out their awful lives again and again in wretched synchrony, we aren't free at all. No matter the tools at their disposal, their very attempts at influencing the chain of events that lead to the present are in fact the very origins of the chain of events existing in the first place. Each attempted rescue becomes a fatal encounter, and it is not possible to opt out. Not even death avails the characters anything if time has decreed otherwise. And trust me, it has.
Does all of this sound awful? It is. But it's hopeful, too, in a sense. DARK offers some of the most touching little moments I can recall in any recent show, not so much because they're uniquely adorable but because they brighten the darkness ("tell me about paradise") like little candles on a long forest road. And after all, there is persistence in the face of literally impossible odds. "Next time it will work" is the most delusional and inspiring sentence ever spoken, because it fully recognizes the futility of attempting to break a cycle that seems unbreakable to such an extent that it bends the laws of physics and still pledges another try. It is in the nature of the main characters, who commit the most heinous of crimes almost without blinking with the very best of intentions, to make the best decisions they can in the end. Selfishness and selflessness go hand in hand on this stage, and every sacrifice - large or small - is heartfelt. Save perhaps one or two on the periphery, there isn't a character for whom I didn't feel both anger and pity, and in many cases, hate/love, which says something for the writing.
Where does this leave us? Who is the father of whom? Whose child is it anyway? One of the most entertaining parts of seasons 1 and 2, for me, was in trying to piece together the intricate and growing family tree that has a larger role in the story than one might first think, and I can happily say that at the end of season 3 I think I have (most of) it all figured out. I leave it to more observant people to find the glaring holes that have to be there somewhere, but for me at least it was as clean of a conclusion as I could have asked for. I dreaded the final episode, not so much because I didn't think it would be good (since every other episode was) but because I was worried if it would be good enough. Would it answer my questions? Would it compromise on its vision in favor of keeping the door open for spin-offs or a fourth season? But no. DARK sticks the landing in a way that feels neither cheap nor, more importantly, all too predictable. Much ado about intricacy, but in the end (most of) the explanations given for Winden's nightmarish histories were as concise and reasonable as they were creative. It is all neatly done.
More, for all of its horrific twists and turns - and the final season certainly delivers more of those than the previous two combined - DARK still finds within itself to end on a note that is... bittersweet. There were nods to the audience (and my most important prediction, + Show Spoiler +Wöller's eye never getting its explanation
Which we didn't, of course, because that's the nature of time - we never know until it's too late.
 
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Northern Ireland25159 Posts
This sounds a really interesting show, will have to check it out!
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Now that we had a reasonably happy resolution, it'd be interesting if they created an alternative ending in which + Show Spoiler +Jonas and Martha cause the car accident that kills Tannhaus's son and daughter-in-law. The beginning is the end, and the end is the beginning.
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East Gorteau22261 Posts
On July 01 2020 21:25 maybenexttime wrote:Now that we had a reasonably happy resolution, it'd be interesting if they created an alternative ending in which + Show Spoiler +Jonas and Martha cause the car accident that kills Tannhaus's son and daughter-in-law. The beginning is the end, and the end is the beginning.
+ Show Spoiler +My heart was all the way up in my throat during the car scene where they're leaning in for a kiss WHILE DRIVING. I thought for sure Jonas and Martha appearing would cause them to lose control of the car and veer out into an oncoming truck. It would have been a real gut punch.
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I enjoyed your review more than i enjoyed season 3 tbh. It's no game of thrones where the ending is completely unsatisfying, but i'd argue that's mostly down to the gap in quality not being as large, the expectations were different.
Where you say it neatly wraps it up, i think they fundamentally cheat in their resolution + Show Spoiler +Time stops during the apocalypse (whatever that even means in the context of infinite moments potentially affecting each other) so there's a little bit of change possible. It's a pretty lazy wrapup if you need this mumbo jumbo to get to any resolution which isn't simply the causal loop we have seen for most of its three seasons
The whole narrative is really convoluted, which was part of the fun though. But it's also more of a puzzle than a meaningful story in my eyes. They loved to throw around with scientific terms to give their concepts more gravitas, but there really isn't much depth to it and it barely qualifies as science fiction in my eyes. The same is true for a lot of the quotes they loved to use, it felt like they picked some which sounded deep, but never fully develop it under the surface and thus at best are breadcrumbs for more interested viewers to maybe search for some philosophy on say free will.
With all that being said, it still got me with the more personal drama aspects, some of these are simply so tragic that one would be hard pressed to not feel anything and connect to it. As a german i am also happy to see that germany can produce a show like this and it's easy to take it seriously and not outright laugh it off as nonsense.
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East Gorteau22261 Posts
On July 03 2020 03:13 The_Red_Viper wrote:I enjoyed your review more than i enjoyed season 3 tbh. It's no game of thrones where the ending is completely unsatisfying, but i'd argue that's mostly down to the gap in quality not being as large, the expectations were different. Where you say it neatly wraps it up, i think they fundamentally cheat in their resolution + Show Spoiler +Time stops during the apocalypse (whatever that even means in the context of infinite moments potentially affecting each other) so there's a little bit of change possible. It's a pretty lazy wrapup if you need this mumbo jumbo to get to any resolution which isn't simply the causal loop we have seen for most of its three seasons The whole narrative is really convoluted, which was part of the fun though. But it's also more of a puzzle than a meaningful story in my eyes. They loved to throw around with scientific terms to give their concepts more gravitas, but there really isn't much depth to it and it barely qualifies as science fiction in my eyes. The same is true for a lot of the quotes they loved to use, it felt like they picked some which sounded deep, but never fully develop it under the surface and thus at best are breadcrumbs for more interested viewers to maybe search for some philosophy on say free will. With all that being said, it still got me with the more personal drama aspects, some of these are simply so tragic that one would be hard pressed to not feel anything and connect to it. As a german i am also happy to see that germany can produce a show like this and it's easy to take it seriously and not outright laugh it off as nonsense.
The way I interpreted it:
+ Show Spoiler +During the apocalypse, the entire world (or universe?) is subsumed by the portal, merging all points in time so that they overlap. The black bubble effect that we see the time machines produce during the story envelops everything, meaning the characters presently exist in all and no time simultaneously. This doesn't markedly diverge from the explanation we're given, but the whole "cause and effect ceases to exist" makes more sense if you consider the implications of everything being simultaenous for a brief moment. Without any action being able to follow upon another, there's a window to relocate or share information without influencing anything outside the bubble because it happens in a vacuum, as it were. After all, they make a point of time not being linear, about A not necessarily following B but rather being co-dependent, and that explanation seems to click with me. It's still a cop-out, but not as cheap as most other time travel solutions in fiction.
With that said, I agree with your general criticisms. I feel like Dark used its sci-fi vehicle to create a really compelling mutligenerational family drama, not necessarily a scientifically sound take on time travel. The best moments were definitely the smaller or more personal moments, but the way they're set up by world-changing stakes was really well done in my opinion. The final scene with Jonas and Hannah, for example, was extremely powerful, not because of its wide-reaching consequences on the grand conflict but certainly set up by the same conflict as a backdrop.
And also, like you say, I think Dark offered a lot of openings into the philosophy of free will without actually breaking any new ground on its own. The implications/consequences of the story far outstrip the story itself, if that makes any sense? I was just ecstatic, as a philosophy student, to have a story with those general characteristics really (it felt like) cater to me. The constant bombardment of Ariadne symbolism and citations from old philosophers kind of felt like necessary window dressing for the story that really wanted to use those motifs and raise those topics, even if they're not fully realized. I think it's a genuinely great attempt at intermingling philosophy and (well, nearly) mainstream television.
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I really enjoyed the first two seasons, they were very simple to follow what happened in 1953, 1986 and 2019 (and a short appearance in 1921, where all began). Third season is a mess. When you watched 3rd season you will realize that is impossible to guess ONE possible outcome/theory if you only watched the first two seasons.
look into spoilers if you watched 3rd season. I have a few questions about it
+ Show Spoiler +
1) How old is Adam (and Eva) at the end?I guess Adam is 66 years older than Jonas? So about 86 years old?!
2) Last or second last episode, Hannah said to Adam, you have a sister (~6year old kid). That Hannah is not the real mother? She must be 100+ years old at that meeting with Adam.
3) Hanno Tauber was born in year 1904 and his parents were born much later due to time-travel?! ;D
4) Who is Kylian? Jonas doesn't exist in "Marthas World" but a Martha does exist in "Jonas World". How come?
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On July 04 2020 01:25 Dingodile wrote:I really enjoyed the first two seasons, they were very simple to follow what happened in 1953, 1986 and 2019 (and a short appearance in 1921, where all began). Third season is a mess. When you watched 3rd season you will realize that is impossible to guess ONE possible outcome/theory if you only watched the first two seasons. look into spoilers if you watched 3rd season. I have a few questions about it + Show Spoiler +
1) How old is Adam (and Eva) at the end?I guess Adam is 66 years older than Jonas? So about 86 years old?!
2) Last or second last episode, Hannah said to Adam, you have a sister (~6year old kid). That Hannah is not the real mother? She must be 100+ years old at that meeting with Adam.
3) Hanno Tauber was born in year 1904 and his parents were born much later due to time-travel?! ;D
4) Who is Kylian? Jonas doesn't exist in "Marthas World" but a Martha does exist in "Jonas World". How come?
It seems you missed some of the connections or explanations. I'm not sure what you mean about impossible to guess one outcome. I think they did a fantastic job at bringing the show to an end. Tried to answer your questions. If someone has better answers please go ahead.
+ Show Spoiler +
1. Yes, I believe you are correct here. The oldest versions of Adam and Eva in the cycle we watch are 66 years older than when we first meet Jonas. At some point I think Adam says it took him 66 years to realize something.
2. That Hannah is the mother. There is no other Hannah, she used the time machine to travel around.
3. Yes he was born at that time. Yes time travel makes this possible in this universe. Everything is happening in a giant cycle of people traveling forward and back.
4. There are in total 3 worlds/timelines that existed. The first world we see and learn in is where Jonas exists because of the time travel. The second world we learn about Eva and Kylian was just another guy that was sort of equivalent to Jonas in that world. Jonas didn't exist in that world because of the chain of events between lovers did not happen the same in that world.
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Just finished the third season. As a TV-show, it was completely satisfying. Everything is well made, it fits together, etc. My curiosity was constantly triggered and I was thoroughly entertained.
But as far as both the philosophy of the series as well as it's overall message, I think it ended on a dissatisfying note. Philosophically the show revolved around the idea of circularity, that being does not have a beginning nor an end, clearly taking a lot from good old German stalwart Hegel. This is of course very controversial in philosophy, not to speak of in everyday thought, not least because it so directly contradicts the fundamentals of Western thought (linearity; cause and effect). So it was disappointing to see the show just capitulate to the common notion of beginning and end at its conclusion.
Furthermore, the way it went down was quite the deus ex machina. + Show Spoiler +After all these episodes and all this searching for answers, it turns out there was nothing to find, nothing to do. The world in which Dark takes place is irrelevant, and it ceases to exist as soon as the external contradiction is resolved.
Second, how are we to interpret the show's ending other than that + Show Spoiler +a provincial shit-hole like Winden, in which everyone are alienated from themselves and each other, is so inhuman not because of its social structure or economy (read: the gloomy presence of nuclear power, towering over nature and humans alike), but because two young kids are in love and actually want something. Everything that is wrong about Winden turns out to be simply these young lovers. As soon as they let go of wanting anything and decide to commit suicide together, everyone else will be okay. In the end, it was simply the kids who were wrong.
I mean, what the actual fuck.
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SPOILER
Is there a place on the interwebs where people are trying to figure out what happened in the real world?
We can use the mirror images to infer stuff about the real world can't we? We just have to remove the people that don't exist. We have to take the events that happen everywhere to make those inferences, just like someone says "What we don't know is an ocean" in every world because of the conversation between Marek and HG Tannhaus in the real world.
There has to be someone cheating on their spouse, but it can't be Ulrich because he doesn't exist, so probably Hannah cheats on Wöller with someone else? Probably with Aleksander, since his real name was Niewald which is a contraction of Nielsen and Kahnwald... Obviously someone kills their mother or father at some point, could it be that Katharina killed Helene in the real world and not the other way around?
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/R3M0WKG.jpg)
