“1899”, on Netflix: an existential abyss in middle of North Atlantic

Baran Bo Odar and Jantje Friese, the creators of “Dark”, invite metaphysical and science fiction on a lost transatlantic between Hamburg and New York.

by Thomas Sotinel

The idea that presides over 1899 is so powerful that the series – of which six in eight episodes were shown before putting online – fails to contain it. Baran Bo Odar and Jantje Friese, Dark designers, have seized one of the fundamental figures of cinema on both sides of the Atlantic and shattered it against a wall of irrationality.

At the very end of the 19th ^{e century, the Kerberos, a transatlantic, vogue towards New York. On board, we find the right company of 1 re} class of the Titanic as the Swedish emigrants of Jan Troell, a badly married French couple who could have tear themselves off at Duvivier or a young Chinese who wants escape prostitution as in Zhang Yimou. Each of these stories is dialogued in the language of the characters.

Enough stories so to feed the program of a Cinémathèque during seasons. But instead of leading their protagonists at good port, so that they can measure themselves in the new world according to a solidly established tradition from one immigrant to another (that of Charlie Chaplin in 1917, that of James Gray in 2013), Friese And Bo Odar remain faithful to the program that the title of the series which made their glory – Dark.

From a contemporary starting point (disappearances of children in a small German town, near a nuclear power plant), the creators had made Dark a fragile and fascinating building that folded time, split the chronologies to sometimes approach the truth of the characters and the German history.

indecipherable imaginary

This time they trap ship (beating British pavilion) and crew (German) in a series of phenomena that are both metaphysics and science fiction. The coverage of a ghost vessel, the disruption of navigation instruments, the multiplication of unexplained dead and appearances cause paroxysms of passion and violence from which we quickly wonder if they are the product of scientific experiences or Kerberos passengers neuroses.

For the moment, 1899 adopted the rhythm of a miniseria (where Dark was deployed on 3 seasons), and we are waiting for a quick resolution that we begin to see in the sixth episode. The constrained space of the story does not allow the multiplicity of the narrative lines to flourish and the interpreters to live in their characters completely. The series alternates between pieces of bravery (the inevitable mutiny) of a relative classicism and swerms in an imaginary which is becoming more and more indecipherable over the episodes.

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