1899 A ship with the suspicious name “Cerberus” is sailing from London to distant New York. Crew members and passengers are representatives of various classes, countries and nationalities, who clearly got on the ship for a reason. Among them, for example, the neurologist Mora (Emily Beecham) – she reads a letter from her brother, who offered to meet in New York. True, the heroine has a suspicion that the relative never sailed to the New World. Just in time, Cerberus captain Eyck (Andreas Peachman) receives a distress call from the Prometheus, the infamous ship that disappeared a few months ago in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The captain decides to change course and go in the company of Mora to help the unfortunate ship, although there seems to be no one to save there.
Netflix’s main non-English successes are considered to be the Spanish heist thriller The Paper House and the Korean anti-capitalist satire The Squid Game, which has held the platform’s first-month viewership record for a year now. Much less is said about the German “Darkness”, which violated all possible audience algorithms and, by some miracle, became a hit on the streaming platform. If the series about the mysterious disappearance of a teenager at first simply deceived the audience, showered them with physical terms and philosophical concepts, then by the end it became so confusing and complex that it seemed an unrealistic task to understand what was happening without huge family trees, 3D diagrams and even memes. Netflix management seemed to be so impressed with the result that they made the only right decision – to give Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese an unlimited budget so that they would do the same, but on a much larger scale and more interesting. Alas, it was not possible to repeat the success.
Without departing far from the past creations of the authors, it must be said that “1899” is such a maximally spectator and simplified “Darkness”, somewhat predictable and not causing headaches. Even before the release, I wanted to believe that the novelty would cross the best of the European TV industry and American opportunities and become a big-budget implementation of the wildest and most daring ideas of the creators of a truly unique series. It turned out exactly the opposite – a Hollywood blockbuster in a European setting and with an accent that cuts the ear. Most of the twists here are not just read in advance – the characters themselves warn about them with the most significant, but in fact understandable phrases like “it’s not what it seems” or “I think they’re not really dead.” The central puzzle is so obvious that it takes a lot of effort to ensure that your first guess about what is happening is wrong. Add to that an offensively superficial soundtrack composed of the most popular rock songs of the last century, and you have an unremarkable series from the Netflix catalog.
On paper, 1899 seems to be almost an exemplary series in which you can find any scenario device: distracting maneuvers, hooks, twists, cliffhangers, foresadowing, Chekhov’s guns. However, while watching all these traps, they rather tire or even enrage – the feeling of artificiality and, ahem, ahem, the construction of what is happening does not leave. As if the neural network crossed several sources of inspiration (The Matrix, Lost, Westworld, Shutter Island and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) with stories about ghost ships and generated something secondary and extremely faded. Perhaps it’s all about one-sided characters-functions (each of them, as is now customary, is revealed through the tragedies of the past or obsession) or in a suffocating hermetic setting, but “1899” does not cause not only sympathy, but also emotions in general. Probably, this dryness could be forgiven for the puzzle series, if it had a more elegant and unforeseen solution.
It’s ironic, but even if you try to praise “1899”, you can do it only through comparison with something. Technically, the series is on par with other flagship and high-priced Netflix series, boasting high-quality special effects with an abundance of catchy visual characters and creepy sound design. And in its best moments, “1899” is reminiscent of “Lost” – another series about an unsuccessful journey and it is no coincidence that passengers are gathered together; and sci-fi “OA”, which every season had to restart the story. In general, it is better to spend time on them, because both series now need an audience more than ever. The first is undergoing a massive revision – even old fans are giving the classics one more chance to soberly assess the scandalous ending. Well, nobody really watched the second one: it gained a cult status in narrow circles and was closed after the second season. The question is, why waste time on a secondary failure, if you can look at the original and much more successful competitors?
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If you’ve been brainwashed by “Darkness” and enjoyed it, don’t worry. The new series of Baran bo Odar “1899” turned out to be no worse than its predecessor.
1899 tells the story of people who take a ship from London to New York to start a new life. But along the way, they receive a message with coordinates from the Prometheus ship, which has been considered missing for four months now.
It is interesting to note that the project is international. The characters speak only their native languages: there are Spaniards, Japanese, French, Danes, Poles and Americans. And each of them has their skeletons hidden in the closet. They are all trying to escape from the various traumas of the past, but will it work?
If the “Darkness” uses time travel, then the creators also resorted to a technique that we have already seen in several works. But it doesn’t disappoint. The creators have a lot of pianos in the bushes. In the middle of the season, you think you’ve got it all figured out, but that wasn’t the case. The characters themselves repeatedly repeat the question: “What the hell is going on here?”. “1899” literally tries to surpass its predecessor in the gloom and intricacies of the plot.
Mysterious triangular symbols, psychiatric wards, mute children, scarred faces, hidden hatches leading to strange tiled air ducts, and futuristic panels controlled by incomprehensible control boxes – all this is just part of the madness that we are shown in the series. A bunch of topical topics are also raised here: the relationship between fathers and children, whether there is a god, what is the gulf between rich and poor, and many others. This supernatural thriller is so convoluted that it’s really hard to figure it out.
The series sprinkles hints and tricks throughout the episodes, but will you be able to prepare for that stunning finale? The end won’t give all the answers, but it will amaze and give a good start to the future of this show. If you like to think and reflect while watching, then welcome aboard the Cerberus.
But what happened to the Prometheus passengers? And what is reality?
The series 1899 – against the backdrop of the popularity of Darkness, promises to be an outstanding serial debut of the director. In fact, we get a picture consisting of good individual short films that make sense. Only now, by combining short films into one meter, we get complete nonsense.
The whole series is shrouded in languor and empty mystery. The actors play each dialogue like in a superhero movie, as if their dialogue is really wise, and the hero’s life line is really important and heavy with anguish. The views of each actor are full of languor and deliberate mystery. It is not possible to reproduce the meaning and content of the dialogues of the characters after watching the series.
The motives and images of the characters are not revealed until the end of the series. Each new fact about the character is necessarily extraordinary, but meaningless in the context of the narrative. It seems that the screenwriter wanted to create the perfect thriller formula by chewing through all the existing methods of viewer tension and chaotically burping them into his picture.
Each episode of the series carries exactly one dynamic event. The feeling after watching that you listened to a long and tedious lead-in just to a small event. The series could be safely reduced to just one dynamic series.
The only thing that I liked about the series is the small dialogues of the workers, which are actively shown to us as stupid and meaningless. But only in these dialogues there was logical thought and wit. Perhaps the screenwriter should try to slow down his mystery in order to restore the logical chain of his narrative.
3 out of 10