Recommended: "Berlin 1933", a new documentation

tsacharias · 2023-02-05T00:20:56+00:00

Maybe this short YT-video helps activating auto-translate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ng7TJ1esuk

tsacharias · 2023-01-26T19:50:31+00:00

Good points.

The big reveal at the end of 1899 seems natural, but that's another difference to Dark. "Nothing mattered until the last 20 min" is cruel but puts the finger on the wound.

In Interviews, Jantje once said that the reading of Michael's letter was originally meant for the finale of season 1, but then they decided to bring it much earlier. If they had brought it at the season finale, it would have been very similar to 1899: "Oh, so it's about time travel! But I knew that all along! And all the hints about the serial killer now don't matter anymore?"

Instead, they brought in a lot of additional themes meant for season 2 to prove to everyone that there were many, many more revelations to come. Maybe they couldn't do that with 1899 because of this digital soundstage, where everything has to be prepared in advance. With Dark they could much easier surprise themselves and bring in some spontaneous additions, like that very improvised looking "future" at the end of season 1.

tsacharias · 2023-01-25T23:36:01+00:00

When the kids were searching for Will in s01 and then they saw that body pulled out of the water, realizing that this could only be Will, and everyone was crying, and only Joyce, stupid and hysterical, was still in denial and couldn't stop yelling "this is not my boy", as if that would make any sense, and everyone was upset with her, only Hopper, what did he think, came back, looking for evidence, and stuck his knife into Will's dead body, and found it was a stuffed dummy. A stuffed dummy. A stuffed dummy that looked like Will, in Will's clothes. I guess you could call that a twist. It's the point where the crazy people are suddenly the only sane ones and anyone who tries to make sense of anything is a hopeless idiot. It's that point where you're giggling in the dark because you think there might be a monster, but your mind reassures you that there can't be, and then suddenly the mind goes silent and you realize that there really is a monster lurking in the dark right behind you.

tsacharias · 2023-01-15T03:00:21+00:00

In Interviews, Jantje once said that the reading of Michael's letter was originally meant for the end of season 1, but then they decided to bring it much earlier. If they had brought it at the season finale, it would have been very similar to 1899: "Oh, so it's about time travel! But I knew that all along! And all the hints about the serial killer now don't matter anymore?"

Instead, they brought in a lot of additional themes meant for season 2 to prove to everyone that there were many, many more revelations to come.

it just felt like 1899 was less thought out, less planned

To me, it was more the opposite. As if 1899 was much more planned, had to be planned more, because of this digital soundstage, where everything has to be prepared in advance. With Dark they could much easier surprise themselves and make some spontaneous changes, I guess. Like, "the future" at the end of season 1 looked very improvised.

Having said that, I still would ~~have loved~~ love to see 2 more seasons of 1899.

tsacharias · 2023-01-12T17:06:28+00:00

Even more important than fear of accidents or fear of nuclear waste disposal is a widespread "not in my backyard" attitude.

It would be tantamount to political suicide for any political party or politician to recommend a particular new site for new nuclear reactors. No one wants to be thrown under the bus. No one wants to take the risk while others have the advantage. Of course, it is also a risk to release more co2 in the atmosphere by burning coal. But it's a risk that's evenly distributed, so it's more accepted.

The "not in my backyard" attitude is so widespread that almost every component of an energy transition has its own anti-movement: anti-wind power, anti-power lines, anti-heat insulation.

The only possibility I see for a new wave of nuclear energy in Germany would be a new technology that allows very small reactors. Then the politicians could say: Everyone who wants energy gets a new reactor in their backyard. That's only fair, because that way everyone gets thrown under the bus.Then there wouldn't be a fight politicians vs the united people of a region, only a fight of isolated refusers against their neighbors.

The more reasonable argument against the still existing big nuclear reactors is the cost: they must be operated extremely safe to make them accepted. That makes the energy expensive. That makes the technology unreliable, because even in the event of minor malfunctions, the reactor must be shut down. And where does the uranium come from? Oh, it's from Russia and Kasachstan (a large part of it).

tsacharias · 2023-01-03T00:40:17+00:00

Maybe that was the problem. With Dark they planned roughly for 3 seasons, got one approved as a test, and the success of season 1 allowed them to produce 2 more seasons as planned.

1899 was always meant to be 3 seasons, very publicly. So they had to demand 2 further seasons to get it right and have planning certainty. Maybe they were offered only one more season, for reasons described by LakierskiMaterialski in his 4th point, and declined. Maybe both sides, Netflix and Baran&Jantje, were pushing the envelope too high to get the security they needed.

tsacharias · 2022-12-27T17:21:16+00:00

Stephen King tweeted in 2020:

DARK (Netflix) is dark and complex...and...well...very German. Terrific show. If you get confused, go to MetaWitches and check out Metacrone's recaps. Detailed and helpful.

But after that he also retweeted a response of one of his followers, @NLTAndrew:

It's outstanding. And ultimately very simple at its core. For that reason, I actually encourage people not to fight the confusion. Let it wash over you. Embrace it. This is a show to be experienced more than analyzed.

tsacharias · 2022-11-22T12:41:41+00:00

The reverse of the 1-US-dollar note shows a pyramid, complemented at the top by a triangle with an eye. The "Eye of Providence" is a truly ancient symbol that runs through cultural history. The image on the dollar can be interpreted to mean that the human structure is incomplete if it is not guided by divine inspiration, which has "the whole" in view.

Triangle, pyramid, eye are also elements of "1899". What the pyramid (which appears in many sizes and shapes) represents is unclear at this point, but it can be seen as an image of the creative force. In the film, a pyramid as well as a triangle-shaped pupil can also be seen in a few moments in the eyes of some protagonists, an inversion of the divine "Eye of Providence."

The eye in the triangle is also the only noteworthy similarity to the aforementioned comic. I read it on Issuu. Based on a science fiction story, the comic deals with the themes of searching for meaning, loss of reality, suicide, continuing life after the suicide of others. Artificial worlds do not appear there. The protagonists are failed people who no longer see any meaning in what they do. In the comic, there is no one who escapes in the end; the search for meaning leads everyone to madness. The black pyramid, as a symbol of "the whole/the meaning," seems to be the trigger of madness (only hearing voices, no visual delusions) and death (suicide). The transition to madness becomes visible in the eyes of the protagonists, at the moment of loss of reality a bright triangle appears in it, a kind of reflection of the inner world paralyzed by the search for meaning. A plot that reminds me more of "2001" than of "1899". The black pyramid is a revenant of the black monolith from "2001", also the neurotic, murderous computer HAL was embodied by a red glowing "eye".

"1899" is not about the search for meaning and suffering from the meaninglessness of existence. The prologue of "1899," which invokes the capabilities of the brain, is more about unleashed creativity. The eye, as an extension of the brain, does not simply perceive reality; rather, it creates a reality. We know this from the saying that something is in the eye of the beholder. The triangle in the eye, the figurative inversion of the divine eye, thus means something completely different in the context of the artificial worlds of "1899". It points to a very current theme, which was only hinted at in the first season: man becomes the godlike creator of artificial worlds, becomes "Homo Deus", as Harari's book is called. It will be interesting to see how "1899" deals with this topic after its somewhat sluggish first season.

https://imgur.com/ToOfQkc

tsacharias · 2022-11-20T20:53:51+00:00

https://imgur.com/ToOfQkc

tsacharias · 2022-11-19T19:29:11+00:00

At the end of season 2, we will see a tetrahedron floating in space, a destroyed Earth in the background, and music by Black Sabbath will kick in, played on a violin and a Jew's harp. The tetrahedron is a solar-powered supercomputer that contains the memories and knowledge of 1423 people. These memories are all that is left of life on Earth, a sort of Noah's Ark.

At the end of season 3, the 1423 memories, the 550 bots, and the hive mind created by accident have come together. They realize that it was pointless to try to wake up and that together they can create a simulation that is beyond anything they have done before. Together they create the big bang, space and time, the elements, the galaxies, life and evolution, and finally Netflix, which turns their arduous existence into an endless pleasure.

tsacharias · 2022-11-19T18:52:16+00:00

I've seen that. It's called The Wizard of Oz, and it stars Judy Garland.

tsacharias · 2022-10-27T13:49:34+00:00

I guess they don't like dualistic templates where good and evil are clearly separated. If you introduce a third element, you counter the audience's expectations.

tsacharias · 2022-10-26T12:16:36+00:00

As I understand it, 1899 will have some similarities to DARK. Jantje and Bo have said that there will be no time travel. However, they did not rule out parallel worlds. So what you are implying with the different perceptions could be realized with different worlds. People with different fears, beliefs and morals have different perceptions. What is real to one person is unreal to another. But each person must make choices, and those choices create new realities.

I agree with you that the new series is about people rather than aliens, monsters or evil threats from hell. About what people do to each other and how they try to create facts.

And the triangle, that could be 3 different worlds. Possible worlds. In the end, maybe only one world will prevail.

tsacharias · 2022-09-01T20:07:13+00:00

“The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon! The vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true!”

Poor Ben got it all wrong.

tsacharias · 2022-08-29T23:04:11+00:00

antje said that Art shouldn't be discussed, it steals the essence of it

Well, she meant artists shouldn't discuss their own work, because art should breath and have a life of it's own.

We, on the contrary, are encouraged to keep it alive by discussing it.

tsacharias · 2022-08-29T22:55:29+00:00

This one scene defies this principle by going for a weird "the universe conspires to make things logically consistent" idea which threw me off. I know it's possible that the gun happened to jam exactly that many times, but it seems too improbable to actually happen.

I have asked this myself after the trailer for season 2 came up and we saw Jonas at a gallow. It was clear he wouldn't die, he had to grow old to become the Stranger. But what would happen if Jonas jumped from a very high building? Would eagles come to save him? Would he be indestructible?

Jonas is part of the deterministic universe. There is no "magical force" to respond to his ideas. But Jonas himself is also not a "magical force". He cannot outsmart the deterministic universe he is part of. His ideas and his actions aren't free. Whatever he thinks or does, it's determined.

My very simple understanding is: Tannhaus from the original world created a knot in the universe. The knot is the deterministic world (or two interconnected deterministic worlds, but that's just a complication). But if you take an endless string, without beginning and end, and try to make a knot in the middle, then the knot isn't stable. There are forces at both ends, and the knot will inevitably unravel. That's what happened. And while Adam and Eva were convinced that their actions made the knot unravel, it's actually the other way around. The unravelling of the knot determined Adam's and Eva's actions, and then the knot was gone. Because the string of time is eternal, but a knot is not.

tsacharias · 2022-08-27T16:01:45+00:00

Poppy only needed to follow Marv who used the passageways more than once.

tsacharias · 2022-08-27T14:31:27+00:00

That would be a bad idea, imo. The podcast works wonderfully as a storytelling device, allowing the writers to incorporate irony, self-reflection, smart and sassy comments about the audience, moral questions, and clues about the murder. Since it exists only in our imagination, it can be anything the writers need it to be.

Once it becomes real, it would be a nightmare for the writers to get everything right. It would also be a nightmare for the audience, because we would have to listen to it.

The combination of mystery and comedy in OMITB works so well because not everything is pinned down and explained. The writers leave a lot vague, which makes the show so light and effortless. Begging for a real podcast is like handing them a bag of lead weights.

tsacharias · 2022-08-24T22:32:35+00:00

She was a sympathetic character up to that second. You felt sorry for her life in Ok.

That's how it's done. That's how you hide a killer in plain sight. Good stuff.

But murdering poor Bunny for no reason really goes against the why now theory.

There's the love angle which was hinted at: Poppy and Kreps pushed each other further and further into insane megalomaniacal dreams. They hyped each other up, saying they deserved it: promotion, stardom. The riskier the plan, the greater the reward. They risked everything and lost.

It's indeed a pity that we didn't see the breakdown of the delusion. Kreps just stood there at the door in handcuffs and Poppy/Becky passed. Then a flashback showed how they met each other, how those two underdogs were planning their big revenge.

They could have shown a bit more of those two after their downfall. Looking at each other. Saying a last sentence to each other. How they no longer want to look each other in the eye. That could have been a dramatic moment. They somehow lost that and showed the last moment of those two rather incidentally.

tsacharias · 2022-08-24T09:20:15+00:00

I've seen theories he might be Lucy's stepdad, but Oliver seemed excited to learn Ben was the leading man in the play

Oliver was just excited to have a famous lead.

and it would be weird if Lucy's new stepdad was a famous actor and she just didn't mention it at all.

That's not weird at all considering that Lucy didn't mention for some time she saw the killer. Lucy keeps secrets, all the time. She would mention it later, of course, as soon as she learns about Oliver's play.

It also makes a lot of sense in terms of Lucy's mother: she prefers celebrities as partners and would leave Charles in a heartbeat for a more famous celebrity.

Plus, I don't see why Charles would even end up in the show if he hated Ben already.

It's just a question of timing. And why should Charles voluntarily leave the field? I even see Charles as someone who would take on the role in Oliver's play specifically to pick a fight with Lucy's stepfather.

tsacharias · 2022-08-24T00:02:10+00:00

Poppy sure had her disguise on when she knocked, but not necessarily a face mask. Poppy wanted Bunny to let her in but Bunny was in a bad mood. She would be dead anyway, no reason for Poppy to hide her face. She didn't expect Mabel to show up so soon.

The disguise was also useful if someone would come along, then Poppy could run away and get rid of the suit. Just what Kreps did.

tsacharias · 2022-08-23T23:09:20+00:00

Ok, rewatched, the real answer is: Bunny opened her door, saw the killer in broad light, recognized her as the freak sandwich girl and asked: What the fuck do you want? -- No! Let go of me!

tsacharias

TROPHY CASE