All the Light We Cannot See

It's not that All the Light We Cannot See is bad; it's a fine way to spend four hours. It's just that there was so much potential for the emotions to be more heightened, the characters to be more complicated and interesting, and the story to be more thought-provoking. The show could have been much more than just fine.

Looks and sounds ravishing - James Newton Howard's lush score will have you choked up from the start. Too bad the perfunctory script simplifies the WWII yarn into a manipulative cartoon fable. .... Exquisite newcomer Aria Mia Loberti is a find. [6 - 26 Nov 2023, p.9]

As a storyteller, Doerr is a master at weaving all these threads and elements together while giving us more nuanced characters, but in this well-intentioned production the stitching and seams that we can see all too often.

It’s there, it’s nice to look at, it does everything you expect it to do, and then it ends. It should have been so much more, and could have been in the hands of a different creative team, but it’s hard to imagine it latching onto the consciousness in the same way the novel did.

With each moment only scratching the surface of the ideas that were put forth in beautiful yet harrowing detail in the lyrical novel, the series does a disservice to the story. It isn’t a complete disaster due to the work of the cast, but it is disappointing to see how it sands down all the more memorable elements of the source material for something more superficial.

The show, directed by Shawn Levy (“Stranger Things”), doesn’t dig into the big issues it raises, most notably about the possibility of redemption in such extreme circumstances. It skirts them, focusing more on the atmospherics.

At times it is so clichéd it could be a Second World War spoof. It is as if the makers were determined to take what some critics hailed a masterpiece and reduce it to a pat potboiler brimming with constipated dialogue.

There are melodramatic excesses — primarily involving a rotating cast of variously rabid Nazi officers — and convenient lapses of logic, but there is an overall level of restraint and wit in Knight’s screenplay that keeps “All the Light” from tilting completely over into shamelessness. If you are amenable to being manipulated in the service of an emotional workout, you probably won’t feel bad in the morning.

Everything about All the Light We Cannot See – from the World War II backdrop to the starry supporting players to having a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as source material – screams prestige, which makes the lifelessness of this four-part Netflix limited series more pronounced. Handsomely done and strangely hopeful, it has all the hallmarks of an ambitious misfire.

It is terrible. The acting is almost uniformly bad. The dialogue gets worse and worse (or if it’s Von Rumpel’s, vurse and vurse). All nuance is lost, all thought has been excised and it feels both drearily slow and stupidly rushed.

The gorgeousness of Loberti's performance may be enough in itself to justify time in front of the screen. But ultimately, All the Light We Cannot See sacrifices the book's carefully drawn moral ambiguities on the altar of mass entertainment.

The show could be forgiven some shonkiness and self-indulgence if the central chemistry between Marie and Werner was coherent. But the achronological telling wreaks havoc with their relationship, and the German soldier is relegated to a footnote. What’s left is a cartoonish portrait of a Nazi in pursuit of a blind girl’s diamond, which does little credit to the sheer scale of suffering endured in both our recent history and the contemporary moment.

Even though All the Light We Cannot See has the ability to show its viewers everything, it never provides enough compelling drama to go with all the pretty pictures.

He [Shawn Levy] has duly reduced a lyrical novel into a Ladybird view of history, drenched in a sickly soundtrack. This series looks lavish, all CGI set pieces and painterly compositions, but it’s style over substance.

Knight and Levy aim for an uplifting, inspirational tale of connection that transcends division, distance and prejudice, but instead deliver a flat, jumbled story that lacks the desired effect.

All the Light We Cannot See is visually impressive and can feel like a movie in places, with its glossy production. But, unfortunately, the quality desperately lacks in other places such as the convincing writing of these characters and their four-episode arcs.