Photo credit: Beta Film
Babylon Berlin
Berlin in the 1920s remains a touchstone for modernism, a fascination for anyone interested in the trajectory of painting, film and music in the 20th century. The city’s cultural ferment developed in response to the political and social upheavals resulting from Germany’s defeat in World War I, the civil war following the proclamation of the republic and a hyperinflation phase when the loaf of bread that cost one million marks in the morning cost two million by afternoon.
The Netflix series “Berlin Babylon” plays on that fascination with the city during the Weimar era. The team behind the German production—based on the crime novels of Volker Kutscher—is headed by the internationally acclaimed writer-director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run). The plot is as complicated as one of those increasingly rare Tolstoyan novels that try to encapsulate an entire time and place within its covers. That’s to say, “Berlin Babylon” is almost as dense with events and unanticipated turns as life itself.
Suffice to add that it involves overlapping circles of people, a set of Ven diagrams representing all social classes and several occupations. There is an expectation of a delayed romance between the two protagonists, troubled detective Inspector Gareon Rath and the intrepid Lotte Ritter. Resist the temptation to call her his sidekick even though she rises from office temp at police headquarters to assistant detective. In many episodes Lotte is more resourceful than any of the men even as she navigates a world where male superiority is assumed. Many of the cops tolerate her at best. Some want her gone. However, Gareon understands her potential.
As for Gareon, he’s in love with the wife of his brother, who just recently was declared officially dead after lingering on for years as missing in action. He’s also addicted to a drug as yet unidentified—and is slipped a powerful mind-bending potion by Edgar Kasabian, the Armenian head of Berlin’s organized crime. Edgar is hard-eyed and fastidious. He’ll kill anyone who crosses him but lives by a code. Like the protagonists and all supporting characters, he’s complicated and as fully realized as any real person.
The art direction is absolutely impeccable, down to the neckties and stockings, the posters on the kiosks and the mastheads of the dozen newspapers representing every shade of political opinion. As for politics, those characters with identifiable affiliations cover the spectrum from Stalinists to Trotskyites, Social Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives and Nazis. The history is accurate. By 1929, when “Babylon Berlin” takes place, German Conservatives really were conspiring to channel the roughneck populism of the Nazis to their own ends. They dreamed of restoring the old order but ended under the jackboots of Hitler’s New Order.
Film aficionados will spot references to Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and the 1925 Phantom of the Opera. Many scenes unspool at Bablesberg, Berlin’s counterpart to Hollywood, where a film is being shot that suggests The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari blended with F.W. Murnau’s Faust—but as a musical! Music plays an important role throughout. A right wing detective whistles the same tune that wheezes from the box of a blind organ grinder, “Mack the Knife.” Guest star Bryan Ferry sings at Edgar’s lavish Deco-Constructivist nightclub, as does a Russian countess performing as a male impersonator. Roxy Music’s “Dance Away” is heard in a 1920s dance band arrangement—one of several indications that the music puts a deliberately postmodern frame on the period recreation.
“Berlin Babylon” has tension and tenderness, humor and suspense, murder mystery and political intrigue—and like a serial motion picture from the 1920s, death-defying cliffhangers. Brilliantly edited and moving breathlessly across the panorama of its story, “Berlin Babylon” is beautiful and engrossing cinema, better than most anything recently released to the multiplexes.
And it’s got sex and drugs and jazz dance bands. Who could ask for more?
Season four is in production.
