BABYLON BERLIN
By Armen Pandola
One of the great questions of modern times is how a country that was renown for its music, theatre, film, philosophy, science and dozens of Nobel Prize winners - how could such a country sink so low in just a few years.
No, not the United States, but Germany in the era immediately before the Nazi take over of the government in 1933 known as The Weimar Republic .
A Netflix series, Babylon Berlin, comes close to answering this question. Now, a new season is available and it promises to be as good as the first two.
It is Berlin in 1929. Inspector Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) is a combat veteran of World War I and a policeman newly transferred from his home town of Cologne to Berlin; he struggles with Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome linked to his experiences in World War I and survivor's guilt over the loss of his brother. Secretly, he self-medicates to keep from shaking uncontrollably.
The Berlin police force is riddled with corruption and worse, it is a haven for pro-Nazi and anti-democracy zealots as exemplified by Detective Chief Inspector Bruno Wolter (Peter Kurth) a Police investigator whose complexity is a symbol of Germany during the Weimar Republic. Wolter is a great friend and a traitor, a loving husband and a rapist who forces young woman to have sex in return for not arresting them, a murderer and an excellent detective. At first, he protects Rath, but by the end of the second season, they are shooting at each other point blank.
Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) supports her miserable family stuck in Berlin's worse ghetto. To do this, she is an occasional prostitute at the Moka Efti cabaret, but her real dream is to become the first female homicide detective on the Berlin police force. At first she works as a stenographer for the Police Department, but soon she is helping Rath investigate murders.
Countess Svetlana Sorokina / Nikoros (Severija Janušauskaitė) is a White Russian émigré, and crossdressing singer at the Moka Efti cabaret. The Countess is heir to the Sorokin fortune. When the Soviets took over Russia, the Sorokin family was 'eliminated' except for Nikros who escaped. Now, it is rumored that the fortune owned by the Sorokins was converted into gold and placed in a tanker/train car that is sent to Berlin from Russia, claiming to hold poisonous gases.
Seasons 1 and 2 ran together on Netflix. There are so many threads to the story that it is impossible to summarize them - just know that there is plenty of action and you won't want to miss any of it. Crime bosses, politicians, Communists, Nazis, revolutionaries, corrupt officials, innocent victims, sex, power, money, friendship, family, love - it's all here in a mix unlike any since Godfather II and Cabaret. No one in Babylon Berlin is all hero nor all villain - they are all people, trying to do a job or eek out an existence in a world they didn't make and don't like.
This is TV at its best. The story doesn't unfold in linear fashion, but rather it blossoms in a very organic way. The masks that people wear everyday - husband, brother, policeman, idealist, prostitute, boss - are slowly stripped away and all that is left is the confusion of a world gone mad. Death is around every corner and no one can be trusted. Amid all this upheaval, two germans, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, construct the most revolutionary musical of all-time, The Threepenny Opera - and the creators of Babylon Berlin use its most catchy tune, Mack the Knife (Die Moritat von Mackie Messer), to unite the fractured nightmare that is Berlin in 1930.
The most gentle person in this most decadent city is Greta Overbeck (Leonie Benesch), a childhood friend of Charlotte Ritter who needs a job - unemployment was at 15.9% in Germany at that time. Councillor August Benda ( Matthias Brandt) , a Jewish Social Democrat and the head of the Berlin Political Police, is the most effective policeman in stopping a military take-over of the government. When Greta and Brenda's paths intersect, it sparks an explosion that neither wants, but neither can prevent. There are other explosions, almost all accidental, but each contributing to the breakdown of German society and the rise of the jackals.
Do yourself a favor and watch this series. But take a deep breath first - it's a long plunge into the darkness of a time and place that gave us Nazis, Hitler, concentration camps, World war II and the holocaust.
Starring:Volker Bruch, Liv Lisa Fries, Peter Kurth
Creators:Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries, Henk Handloegten