Submitted by a viewer of the summer film series
Some Random Thoughts on “All the Light We Cannot See,” limited series streaming on Netflix and this week’s feature in the CAL/AP Summer Film Festival
Description (lifted from IMDB on-line): Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
This series was very good, but emotionally draining and often depressing. Here are some other thoughts that came to mind.
First, I love the title. Even without knowing what it is about, it is a great title. Poetic.
Second, I am always curious about the accuracy of historical movies. When I first saw the blind protagonist using a white cane in the 1930s, my first thought was ‘was the white cane in use in the thirties?’ Not knowing the history of the white cane (although I probably should have), I went googling. As it turns out, the use of the white cane began between the two world wars, first in Europe, and to a large degree in France, where the movie is set. Beginning in 1931, eight thousand white canes were given away in France before World War II.
Third, any movie about World War II and, in particular, Nazis, is bound to be depressing. The blood and gore and cruelty of the deadliest war in history is overwhelming. After thousands of years of civilization, humankind arrived at that? Will we ever learn? You would think after that horrific experience, we would have finally learned, but no. We keep killing each other and keep finding better and more efficient ways of doing it. We live literally next door to each other for thousands of years and still want to exterminate each other. As far Nazi Germany, how can one group of people be so deluded, so fooled, and so misguided by one man and his philosophy of hate. But can we say in these current times, are we any better?
Finally, it was a very well-done series with very good acting. I didn’t recognize Hugh Laurie until the third episode. Mark Ruffalo is good in anything he does. The young woman who played the lead, Aria Mia Loberti, who does have a visual impairment, had no acting experience before this series, but she was phenomenal.
Well worth watching.
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