Babylon Berlin

Babylon Berlin (2017) 

Volker Kutscher is something like “German James Ellroy". In the same way, he builds a (neo) noir crime movie as an unadorned image of the time through the seeming cacophony of postwar disillusionment, proletarian moods, cabaret debauchery, moral crimes, decadence, a mixture of ideologies, and much more. He combines seemingly disparate lines and look at them from bottom to elite; nevertheless, his ambiguous characters are always at the center of the action. The scope is not small and sometimes the case itself is forgotten. It´s quite tricky to adapt, but Babylon Berlin got the care it deserved. And so, the scale, the epicness, the design, the technical side (especially Tykwer's influence is obvious) and much more, all that remains is to nod appreciatively and admiringly. The cast is accurate, it's intoxicating, it doesn´t consider a viewer as a moron, who needs constant explanation of everything, here and there a scene is seen that you just can't get out of your mind (yes, the first is the hypnotic cabaret Zu Asche, Zu Staub. Nevertheless, all of this is reprehensible because of one aspect, which is hard to accept and it is not possible to get used to it completely even after several series. Although it takes place in Berlin, the fates of the two dozen characters are constantly intersecting. Unlike the original, however, this is not so cleverly done; it is quite fundamentally different from each other, only the points of contact are common, it is not so much an adaptation as rather generally inspired by the motives of original. In the series, this is not justified by "storyline" thanks to the carefully prepared foundation, but simply by chance over and over again. In the area of a few days, one and every actor (and not just the central ones) repeatedly “just by the way" (not) directly clashes with another. The paper rustles in a deafening way when seeing this. It's so excessive “lost style", overused (it's not once every few episodes, but almost scene by scene) that it would seem ridiculous and unbelievable even in a village where only fifty people live and everyone knows each other. Not to mention in the busy, elemental and crowded cosmopolitan metropolis. Grrr. This is also true of the second series, but there it is at least slightly not that frequently seen. | S1: 4/5 | S2: 4/5 | (03/02/2019)