Louis Hofmann in All the Light We Cannot See

Yes, I know it’s technically a mini-series and not a film per se. But as we joke in our house, it’s not a series, but it’s a movie in four parts (inside joke). But it’s a very popular Netflix show, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s also not hard to see why Rotten Tomatoes shows it having an 87% audience score, and has a 27% critics score.

The show had all the potential in the world. Based on a popular book, it features a blind young woman in France, a German soldier who was never converted to Nazism, and a strong WWII background. Between the war setting and it’s being focused on France, we (my wife and I) headed into it with high hopes.

It didn’t take long for those hopes to be, if not dashed, at least torn and stomped on. The look of the film is soft and lovely, which is a bit at odds with the subject matter. Yes, it’s a memory (as well as a period) piece, but it looks like a Hallmark movie with low lighting and a lot of browns. Then there is the mise-en-scene and the music. In the first instance of someone about to die from aerial bombing, the young man about to meet his Maker is set so far apart in the back of the frame that I was impatient for the obvious to happen so we could move on. Not only was there no sense of either surprise or discovery, I was unhappy with myself for wanting the stretched-out shot to be over and dispense with him already. The obvious compositions signal to us what’s about to happen all through the series.

There is actually a moment (repeated near the end) that is a jump scare. No, this is not a horror film by any stretch, but it was refreshing to not seeing something coming a mile away. It added some much needed, if temporary, energy to the series. It’s a scene that used music well—“Clair de Lune” is featured repeatedly in the series. Unfortunately, most of the time, the music is reminiscent of 1940s noirs or dramas that sets up the viewer very early in the scene and lets you know if there was any danger around the corner. I was wondering how much more I would have enjoyed it had there been no non-diegetic music at all.

I admit to seeing all four parts. One, I enjoyed the story, the setting, and the timeframe; two, I tend to be a completist (to my wife’s general frustration); and three, I got invested in the characters. Yes, the final outcome was as surprising as what happens when the hyper city girl runs into the laid-back country boy in a Christmas movie. But the two leads are decent enough actors, and are very sympathetic. They are the reason to stick with the story. Marion Bailey (who played the Queen Mother in The Crown) is also a strong presence in a part that could have just been either all soft and squishy or hard and Lesley Manville-y. She among the older folks is the only one completely submerged into her part, speaking every line with conviction and purpose.

And that brings us to the two greatest acting disappointments of the film. I generally love Hugh Laurie (“House”). Laurie, who has been heralded as the gold standard for accents—especially the difficult American accent—speaks in something like a soft British accent (he’s a Brit after all) coated in American. It’s a bit confusing, if not alienating. Plus, he has the most awkward lines to speak with a straight face. The series can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be a tough war film with a soft center, or a fable set during WWII. Laurie seems to do what he can with the character he’s given, but there is an unreality about both his characterization and his accent that his character both stands out in the wrong way and recedes in another wrong way.

And that brings us to the most disconcerting part of the film, and that is the casting and performance of Mark Ruffalo. Perhaps Ruffalo was the “American name” needed to greenlight this show, and I understand if I were him, I would want a softer, nicer role for a change. I guess it’s supposed to be a French accent he’s sporting, but it sounds more Mittleuropean at times, though he’s in and out of whatever accent he’s going for. His character is the kind, gentle, and helpful dad, but between the lines he’s forced to say and a character that’s halfway to the tired generic sweet old grampa, he clearly places himself on the fable side of things, which robs the film of a great source of interest and energy.  

One aspect I found fascinating, and that hinted at something more that the film was doing, even if it wasn’t trying to, had to do with the Nazi characters. Yes, they are generally as black-and-white as you can imagine, and thankfully, Lars Eidinger humanizes the most evil of the evil Germans, which is quite the feat considering both his character and what he is asked to do. But every Nazi, from the youngest and freshest to the oldest and hardest—with the exception of our male lead, of course—puts on an arrogant, power-hungry, wicked mien as soon as he opens his mouth or has an action to perform. As one who still shakes his head at what happened to the Germans that led to the rise of Nazism, I found this aspect of the film to be intriguing, and made me wish the film had done more with that.

If you don’t mind being signaled both visually and aurally before something occurs, and if the plot and setting override the question of whether realism or fable is what the filmmakers are going for, and if you can handle seeing the electric/eclectic Ruffalo awkwardly try to play soft and sweet, then go for it. Just think of it as 1917 combined with “World on Fire” combined with The Diary of Anne Frank combined with a soupçon of Titanic. It’s on Netflix, and, as we say in our house when referring to something a step up from meh, it’s “fine.”