Roush Review: Too Much Bombast Obscures the ‘Light We Cannot See’

All The Light We Cannot See

Matt's Rating:

A throwback to when big books became big miniseries, the lavish four-part adaptation of All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, looks and sounds ravishing — James Newton Howard’s lush score will have you choked up from the start. Too bad Steven Knight‘s perfunctory script and Shawn Levy‘s (Stranger Things) blunt direction simplifies the WWII yarn into a manipulative cartoon fable. Nuance being war’s first casualty. (It happens maybe twice a year, but this is the rare Netflix series that might have benefited with a few extra episodes.)

As Marie-Laure, the blind French girl broadcasting coded radio messages from a Nazi-occupied seacoast village, exquisite newcomer Aria Mia Loberti (herself sight-impaired) is a find. She’s the best reason to watch as the story devolves into overproduced melodrama. Her counterpart from the war’s other side, as in the novel, is Werner (Louis Hofmann), a young and very reluctant German soldier who happens to be a whiz at fixing electronics, including radios. Both grew up transfixed by educational and inspirational short-wave transmissions from a sage calling himself “the Professor,” who turns out to be Marie-Laure’s uncle Etienne (Hugh Laurie).

We meet Etienne, a recluse with PTSD from the earlier “Great War,” when Marie-Laure and her kindly dad, Daniel (Mark Ruffalo mumbling platitudes), flee Paris during the Nazi occupation and land in St. Malo, hiding from enquiring eyes. It’s their bad luck that crazed Nazi officer Reinhold von Rumpel (a manic Lars Eidinger) is on their trail, seeking a precious jewel Daniel may have taken from a museum. Von Rumpel believes the gem holds some magical quality that could cure what ails him.

And so instead of the book’s more compelling structure, alternating Marie-Laure’s and Werner’s life journeys in short and absorbing chapters, the TV version minimizes Werner’s morally complex backstory to emphasize the thriller aspects of von Rumpel approaching and searching St. Melo. Will he find Marie-Laure before Werner? Will Werner ever connect with his muse? (His climactic action scene, running through the village streets with bombs blazing, feels like an outtake from 1917.)

Related

See Mark Ruffalo & Hugh Laurie in 'All the Light We Cannot See' Trailer

This isn’t terrible filmmaking, just negligible, thuddingly obvious and (unlike the book) forgettable. Less bombast might have made this a more illuminating event.

All the Light We Cannot See, Limited Series Premiere, Thursday, November 2, Netflix