Animation
Blood of Zeus
Creativity abounds here, but those artistic measures can’t blur the obvious issues that families are sure to discover.
They called it the Sea of Flames.
To call it a mere diamond seems to diminish the thing. Yes, it is big. Yes, it is assuredly beautiful. Valuable? It is so valuable that before World War II, France’s National Museum of Natural History kept it hidden in its own vault.
But perhaps that was to keep its curse under lock and key as well.
It was said that whoever owned the Sea of Flames would never die. But the owner’s friends? Family? Or even those close to someone who touched the stone? They would suffer horrific misfortune.
So Daniel LeBlanc told his young, blind daughter, Marie-Laure. Daniel, the museum’s chief locksmith and a man of science and logic, passed it off as an “absurd legend.” But when Marie asked him if he’d touched the stone himself, he grew strangely quiet.
“Come, Marie,” he said in 1934. “Let’s eat.”
That was a decade ago, and horrific misfortune has befallen the world. World War II is drawing to a bloody end. Daniel is gone, and Marie knows not where. She’s alone in the small port of Saint-Malo, a town occupied by Nazis and bombed by the Americans. She’s a tiny cog in the Nazi resistance movement: Each night she broadcasts a small show on shortwave radio, reading Jules Verne to whoever might be listening … and delivering the coded messages the story hides.
The Nazis are listening, that’s for sure. Officially, they want to end this illicit broadcast and kill the teen behind it. But one German officer, Sgt. Maj. Reinhold von Rumpel, wants something more. He’s looking for Marie for a wholly different reason.
Von Rumpel knows all about Marie’s father. He knows that Daniel was one of three possible caretakers of the Sea of Flames. The soldier knows, too, that he is dying from a disease with no cure. Von Rumpel’s only hope: that the “curse” might be real. That if he could claim the diamond for his own, he might be healed. He might just live forever.
But another German listens as well. Werner was enlisted by the Nazis as a radio expert—able to locate illegal broadcasts so that the men with guns could shut them down. He’s done his job countless times, and he’s done it well. But when he listens to Marie, it’s different. He’s transported by her voice, mesmerized by her stories. And he will do what he can to protect her.
Anthony Doerr’s novel All the Light We Cannot See stormed the literary world in 2014, selling more than 15 million copies and winning a Pulitzer Prize. It’s a curious blend of gripping narrative, scientific wonkiness and deep, rich lyricism. And it became one of my favorite books from the last several years.
Alas, Netflix’s take on the book loses much of its poetry—and infuses it with unnecessary problems.
Certainly, the book had its share of issues. It could be violent and coarse. But this miniseries shoehorns in a lot more language than that book ever had, and it seems to want to sicken its audience with its violence. The miniseries deviates significantly from its source material as well. It feels as though Netflix misreads its audience. Fans of the book probably didn’t say to themselves, “Yeah, the novel was fine, but it really needs to be dumbed down. And it could use a lot more cursing.”
All the Light We Cannot See isn’t without some merit. It features some fine actors (including Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie) and still carries a whiff of what made the book so memorable. But Netflix apparently could not see the novel’s real points of beauty. Instead, it chose to shut its eyes.
Marie-Laure broadcasts personal messages to her uncle Etienne (who said he’d be gone an hour and has been missing for days) and her father (who said he’d be gone days and has been missing for a full year) before returning to her reading of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Meanwhile, Werner listens to her over his own broadcast-detecting apparatus—and keeps the signal secret from his military overseers. Sgt. Maj. Reinhold van Rumpel questions the residents of Saint-Malo about the location of a “blind girl.”
One interview ends with van Rumpel killing the man he’s questioning when he refuses to tell the Nazi anything. Before killing the man, van Rumpel notes that he’s a jewelry expert; most of the other available experts to the Nazis were Jewish, and (van Rumpel notes) they’ve since been gassed, shot, hung or starved to death. Another man is shot and killed. Other soldiers die via bomb blasts (and rubble covers their bodies). Werner cuts his hand on a wire.
In flashback, Marie’s father tells her about the curse on the Sea of Flames. We see him teaching the blind Marie how to find her way around Paris via a three-dimensional wooden model of the city.
In another flashback, this one focusing on Werner, we see the faith-based orphanage where Werner and his sister are being raised, as well as the kindly nun who encourages Werner’s electronic abilities. In the present, Marie references “breaking bread” with her uncle again. A church figures prominently in the opening credits.
Von Rumpel visits a prostitute. She wears rather modest lingerie and reveals some of the woman’s cleavage. But when she prepares to entertain him, he tells her, “I’m no longer interested in sex,” citing his illness. “In truth, losing my libido has been like being unchained from a lunatic,” he admits.
The prostitute smokes a cigarette. Von Rumpel drinks a bottle of wine in a French tavern, and he later says that one should not mix Beaujolais (a French wine) and morphine. Soldiers drink brandy and schnapps. One who’s not used to alcohol vomits afterward.
We hear four f-words, one s-word and a few other profanities (including “b–tard” and “h—“). Jesus’ name is abused twice.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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