![]() Like Marie, Loberti is sightless, but that shared experience only lays the groundwork for a magnificently present performance that draws out the intelligence and tenacity of a character who might otherwise have been reduced to a pitiable damsel in distress. Aria Mia Loberti and Mark Ruffalo in All the Light We Cannot See Timea Saghy-NetflixĪt least All the Light’s creators made one inspired decision, in casting Aria Mia Loberti, a newcomer with no formal training in acting, as heroine Marie-Laure LeBlanc. Knight’s script is particularly flimsy, shallowly skimming each character’s surface and failing to meaningfully address the big moral questions that come with depicting a Nazi combatant as a good person. Not that these red flags alone can account for how many disastrous choices went into the making of this maudlin show. Another is that, unlike so many powerful authors who’ve helped shepherd their novels to the screen, Doerr is not among the series’ producers. One clue that screenwriter Steven Knight ( Peaky Blinders, See) and director Shawn Levy ( Stranger Things, Free Guy) have done wrong by Doerr’s story, of a blind French girl and a brilliant orphan turned reluctant German soldier in bombed-out Brittany during the final months of World War II, is that they’ve whittled down the 544-page doorstop to a skeletal four episodes. 2, isn’t just inferior to the book it’s a schmaltzy, incompetent, borderline offensive mess whose mere existence tarnishes the book’s legacy. ![]() That series, which arrives on the streamer on Nov. All the Light became a cultural phenomenon, selling more than 15 million copies worldwide by the time Netflix greenlighted a TV adaptation in 2021. The New York Times called the novel “ hauntingly beautiful” and named it one of the 10 best books of 2014. Barack Obama made time to devour-and recommend-it while he was still in the White House. ![]() It won a Pulitzer Prize and was shortlisted for a National Book Award. For a more convincing Second World War saga, you’d be better off with an episode of ’Allo ’Allo.Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See might be the most widely acclaimed book of the past decade. This series looks lavish, all CGI set pieces and painterly compositions, but it’s style over substance. He has duly reduced a lyrical novel into a Ladybird view of history, drenched in a sickly soundtrack. Levy is best known for family-friendly blockbusters such as Night at the Museum. Knight’s script is overly wordy yet emotionally under-powered. Everyone spouts exposition and speaks their motivations aloud. The narrative moves with the urgency of a barrage balloon, bouncing around in time whenever it’s in danger of gathering momentum. Ruffalo’s mangled sing-song accent wanders randomly across the continent, often within the same sentence. Villains are all cartoonishly evil: morphine-addicted monsters, sneering sadists, greedy gem-hunters. ![]() Heroes are all saintly: the disabled beauty, the noble orphan, the charismatic freedom fighter. The result is preachy, sanitised and sentimental.Ĭharacters who were delicately nuanced on the page are drawn in rudimentary strokes on screen. Writer Steven Knight and director Shawn Levy have clumsily scissored the source material to make it less dark and more optimistic. It’s epic, it’s sweeping, it’s other adjectives that get applied to period productions. Meanwhile, Werner falls in love with her voice, risking his life to protect someone he’s never seen. As bombs fall and the townsfolk starve, they fight to keep Marie’s location secret. Instead, her transmissions are intercepted by teenage German soldier Werner Pfennig (Louis Hofmann), an electronics genius reluctantly enlisted by the Nazis to track down resistance signallers. She illegally broadcasts over the radio each night, hoping that her coded messages will reunite her with her missing father (Mark Ruffalo) and uncle (a whiskered but wasted Hugh Laurie). All the Light We Cannot See (on Netflix now) somehow ends up a flat, flavourless Euro-pudding.īased on Anthony Doerr’s bestseller, this trite and turgid four-parter follows Marie-Laure LeBlanc (luminous debutant Aria Mia Loberti), a blind girl in Nazi-occupied France. The ingredients are all there but the recipe fails to rise. An Oscar-nominated director blessed with an A-list cast and a whopping budget. A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, adapted by a decorated screenwriter.
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