The German series “Dark” by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese was a worldwide success, and now the duo is following suit: “1899” does not forgive inattention.
It is an unwritten law that there must be a forest in every German series and in every German film. Prefers deciduous forest, coniferous trees will do if necessary. Even in the new mystery series “1899”, which takes place on the high seas, there is a trip to this most German place of longing and nightmare. Eyk Larsen (Andreas Pietschmann from “Dark”), the captain of the emigrant ship “Kerberus”, wanders through a forest before stopping in front of a house in a clearing. He sees his daughter standing at the window, his wife stands next to her, then the building goes up in flames. Larsen’s wife really burned the house down, we learn, along with herself and the three daughters. Dead children, there are also plenty of them in German productions.
Does the scene represent a fantasy or a memory of Larsen’s, or a hallucination? A mystery, like so many in “1899”. Because the series is actually looking for a lost ship, the Prometheus. No one heard from her for more than four months, then her sister ship Kerberus was given its coordinates in Morse. Against the resistance of the crew and passengers, Larsen follows the call of the Prometheus, but finds only one passenger alive on board the ship: a boy with no name and eerie big blue eyes, locked in a dresser. The doctor and brain researcher Maura Franklin (Emily Beecham), traveling alone, takes the child in and tries to elicit the mystery of the Prometheus from him. At the same time, a stowaway (Aneurin Barnard) emerges from the sea and moves into the cabin next to Franklin. There are iridescent green beetles and small black pyramids, mysterious letters and a symbol that can be rediscovered on interiors, jewelry and documents. The intro features a cover of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”: “When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead,” it says. “Remember what the dormouse said: Feed your head.” Everything is connected, everything might be significant. “1899” does not forgive the inattention of the viewers.
You have to read the subtitles
Also because of the language: The emigrants, who all hide secrets, come from Spain, Denmark, France and China. What they say is not dubbed but subtitled. In order not to miss anything, you have to keep your eyes on the screen at all times. That is sometimes tiring.
The series was created by the duo Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, he directed it and she wrote the screenplay – just like “Dark”. In this Netflixseries there were also a lot of mysteries, also time travellers, a nuclear power plant and a lot, a lot of forest. “Dark” was successful internationally, and the third and final season also appeared in various leaderboards in 2020. So the legacy for the successor “1899” weighs heavily. The eight-part series is said to have cost around 50 million euros. It replaces the Sky prestige project “Babylon Berlin” as the most expensive German series to date.
“1899” was shot in front of gigantic LED backgrounds in the new Dark Bay Studio in Babelsberg, Berlin due to pandemic-related travel restrictions. The virtual worlds, in this case the mostly steel-blue sea in front of a mostly steel-grey sky, were recorded and filmed on huge screens. An advantage for the actors, who otherwise have to imagine the environment in front of green screens, but there remains a certain artificiality that is probably wanted in this case.
The characters also lack depth. The abundance of mysteries hardly allows for development. As if remotely controlled, the protagonists stroll through the ship’s long wood-panelled corridors, in which all orientation is lost. The only thing that is clear is that something is wrong with all of them and they are filled with a vague fear. The experienced seamen are afraid of the sea and the brain researcher does not trust her own perception. One wishes for something real, tangible, like a tidy German forest.
1899, eight episodes, new on Netflix
