Dark

 

Following my review of 1899, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2022/11/1899.html, I was interested to check out Baron bo Odar's previous work, Dark. Also, Anthony Peake recommended this too, saying it was even more "ITLADian" than the newer one. This is a much longer project, a miniseries of twenty-six hour-long episodes split into three seasons. Like 1899, there are a large number of primary characters, fifteen to twenty in this case, and they are in an ensemble with no central figure. This is a structure similar to soap operas or daytime dramas. Adding in the esoteric element the whole effect reminded me very much of Twin Peaks, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2021/09/twin-peaks.html. The story takes place in a small German town called Winden that has in its centre a nuclear power station and research centre. There is a cave underneath it with an astonishing secret, a portal that allows a person to time travel. The portals emerge in periods of time thirty-three years apart over at least a century and a half from the past into the present and then the future; the years 1888, 1921, 1953, 1986, 2019 and 2053. Children in the town keep vanishing and it turns out that they vanish because they enter the portal and move into the past or future. They find themselves in the same place, the cave in Winden, but during a different era. On some of these occasions the children remain in the time period they emerge into, either voluntarily or because they can't get back to the portal for various reasons. (For a teenager in the present day going back in time to be a teenager in the 1980's, I can well believe they would not wish to return!) This has generated a dark secret among the people of Winden, some of the residents are actually the same person at different periods of their lives; they even meet each other. This makes family relationships extremely complex. Some offspring are older than their parents, or even their grandparents. One person can be a father, mother, or step-parent at the same time. In one incestuous circuit, a woman called Charlotte is both the mother and daughter of another character, Elisabeth. In the third season the complexity is deepened by the addition of a parallel universe. It makes the series hard to follow for the viewer and I recommend finding some spare time to binge-watch it, rather than dipping in and out of it like I did.
 
The production designers have gone to some effort to make it easier to know what's going on. For instance, one of the characters is very distinctive because she has eyes of a different colour, so the viewer can spot her immediately, even though we see her as a little girl, a middle-aged woman and finally an old lady. Different time periods and universes are also designated for the viewer by different weather conditions. In the parallel universe it's always foggy; in 2053 it's cold and wintry, in 1888 it never stops raining. The portal under the nuclear plant, along with the invention of a very steampunk time machine reminiscent of 1899, means that the storyline takes place in an indefinite causality loop, similar to the film Groundhog Day. Like the main character in that film, the mission of the characters is to break that cycle. They are led by a group of people who know the truth about the time loop called "the Travellers". However, the Travellers are not united in their vision and have different goals when it comes to moving forward out of the time loop. The series does lack a lot of plausibility because of the problem of paradoxes, something I brought up in a video script I once wrote. Travelling into the future is not a problem, at least theoretically, as Albert Einstein worked out. Travelling into the past cannot be done literally. It can only be simulated through the many-worlds hypothesis, see here for details: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2019/05/time-traveller-comes-back.html; but as I said, the story of Dark does include a parallel universe element. Dark is a well-acted, absorbing and ambitious production that never drags, despite its duration. Sometimes it's upsetting. I'm pleased to say the casting is very "natural" for a town in rural Germany, if you know what I mean. Unlike 1899, the dialogue is all in its native German, but on Netflix the audio and subtitle options are available too. I wonder what Michael Shrimpton makes of it!
See here for background: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2023/02/anthony-peake-book-launch.html.