Reviews

One good thing about this so called "documentation": It encourages people to think for themselves. But if you do so you can easily falsify 90% of the "facts" in this film. Most of that because you can recognise the wrong deductions, others because you can check the so-called "facts" with little effort by the help of literature and proper sources. Even paper books that are printed before 9/11 can give you enough simple scientific information to falsify most of the claims that are made in this film. And the remaining 10% which you cannot check by yourself are just unproved allusions. Equally I could claim that the bike I had some decades ago as a child has been taken to Africa and used for repairing a wheelchair. Nobody can prove or falsify this.

It is okay when people think they find truth in this movie, but this only proves that they did not follow one of the main statements given by conspiracy theories: think for yourself, check all arguments, and do not believe everything that you've been told.

This movie is like a painting where you just cannot grab the meaning the painter intended to show. Filmmaking is art and so is this movie, but the film is like a painting that is made with great technique by a master and nonetheless lacks substance of what the painter wants us to see. So like in a museum in front of a paining that I do not understand I sit here and wonder what all this was about. I am at a loss, confused, and I was in this state most of the time watching this film. And this is what this movie tells us about the writer and director: he obviously was at a loss and confused. Nice views, nice acting, but a diffuse story that pulls the whole film into the dirt.

What a pity!

The mini series (first season so far) was produced in times of the corona pandemy in Germany.and focuses on the interaction between people in video chats and flat communities. While the settings and ideas of the different stories (told with different actors in each episode) are really nice, the episodes themselves are just not interesting enough to keep me focused. So with each episode at some point I started begging for the end of the stroy. So, it could have been much better, it could have been much worse. For me that makes five out of ten.

Yes, the series is sort of a big thing with nice setups, brilliant pictures, good actors, and so on. Unfortunately the way of storytelling is just too similar to all those other mystery series and movies. This takes away very much from the original story and that almost hurts me as if somebody takes my personal dæmon far away from me (as it works in the story's parallel reality).

It is my personal 'relationship' to the story which struck me some years ago. The enormous depth of the tale and the interconnected parts of physics, religion, and fantasy is for me some sort of giant achievement in storytelling. But allmost everything that makes His Dark Materials so special is lost in this series. For me watching the episodes is like seeing a black and white silent movie with 16 frames per second when you expect an 8K experience in 3D and surround sound. It does not necessarily mean that the movie is bad but the way the story is told just seems too lousy. Even the BBC radio play from 2003 has more depth in the main story than this brand new television series.

Thus I must say that the artwork has thomething of a 7 or 8 out of 10 but the overall experience is much less than that. And that is very sad indeed.

One might think that the plot is quite constructed and far away from realistic, because the behaviour of police and journalists looks too strange in this story. But all this stuff is extremely close to reality.

I remember the actual crime and the hunt taking place in Germany very close to my home in northrhine-westphalia, and I remember the repeated shocks and disbelieve I was in when all the television broadcasts rushed over the screens. Now, 30 years later, the mini series remembers us of what happened back in 1988.

The film makers say they added fictional elements to the plot and that of course must be true because just for example, police internal dialogues could not have been reconstructed this way. But in my opinion this film looks like it is very close to what really happened. Many if not all of the earlier television news are minutely reproduced with the actors and placed within the movie. I was thrown backwards in time while watching the film and watching again this failure of police and journalism.

This is not only a police thriller but in times a heartbreaking story about fear and loss. It is the best German television production I have seen in years. Very intense!

(Dies ist eine Übersetzung meines Erstkommentars auf imdb.com vom 20.04.2007)

Als ich die Kurzserie in den achtziger Jahren erstmalig im Fernsehen sah, empfand ich sie als sehr aufregende, mitreißende Geschichte. Nach beinahe 20 Jahren habe ich sie erneut gesehen, und auch diesmal war ich schwer beeindruckt.

Ich beziehe meinen Kommentar auf den Inhalt der Geschichte, die ich sehr mitreißend finde. Es wird Zuschauer geben, denen der Stil, das Schauspiel der Protagonisten oder das Set nicht gefällt. Derlei Dinge irritieren mitunter. Manche der Figuren scheinen irgendwie deplatziert, falsch angezogen oder benehmen sich für ihre Rolle untypisch. Beispielsweise gibt es eine Art Mafia, deren Mitglieder furchtbar schlecht sitzende Anzüge tragen und sich ein ums andere Mal eher slapstickgleich benehmen.

Doch all diese deplatzierten Kleinigkeiten haben mich persönlich kaum gestört. Die Geschichte um einen Computerfreak und seinen Hund, die zwischen die Fronten einer Geheimorganisation, der Polizei und des organisierten Verbrechens geraten, könnte prinzipiell auch in die heutige Zeit passen - auch wenn zuhaus natürlich niemand mehr Akustikkoppler für die Datenübertragung verwendet (was zusammen mit den übrigen "altertümlichen" Technologien doch wieder ganz nett anzuschauen war).

Vermutlich würde manch einer die Serie aufgrund der oben erwähnten "Irritationen" mit mittelmäßigen bis schlechten Noten abstrafen. Für mich allerdings liefert sie eine fast perfekte Krimiunterhaltung. Wenn es ginge, gäbe ich 9,5 Punkte, die ich nun auf 10 aufrunden muss - denn 9 wären einfach nicht genug.

When I first saw this movie in television, back in the eighties, I watched a really thrilling story. Now, almost 20 years later, I have seen it again. And again I was excited by this movie.

Here, I refer mainly to the story, which I find very captivating. Some spectators might be bothered by the way, the story is shown on the screen. Few people in this film seem to be a bit wrong dressed, some behave in a strange matter, that I would not expect. For example, there are members of a kind of mafia, whose suits do not fit properly and who sometimes behave in a slapstick manner.

But all these little wrong placed parts did not really disturb the good feeling, that I had when I watched that film. The story about a computer freak and his dog, who almost get crushed between a crime syndicate, a secret organization and the German police could absolutely be placed in the modern times as well. Although nobody in our days uses acoustic couplers - which were really cool to see again beside all the other old fashioned technologies.

Perhaps some people would rate this movie 5 or even 1. For me it is almost perfect entertainment, and I would give it a 9.5 that I round up to a 10. Because 9 would not be enough.