What a time to be alive! A feature of some Netflix Originals is that they’re dubbed in several languages. It’s a great way to immerse yourself in the ones you’re studying on Duolingo. These two applications together are a dream from the past about a future that has manifested in the present: Accessible self-teaching tools in the form of entertainment. Things often thought to be mutually exclusive.
This convergence is part of the philosophy of Dark, a slow burning sci-fi mind bender that recalls Donnie Darko, Twin Peaks, and even Stranger Things. One character in the show – a watchmaker – describes the world’s apparently default philosophy of dualism as a perspective that sees everything as a pair of opposites. He notes the limitations of this perspective – seeing things in black or white, good or evil – as part of why we conceive of time as merely linear.
In Dark, the mechanics of three dimensional time are presented by a menacing cave and a confounding family tree, which does the bulk of the work in creating a knot of interwoven time-lines. It’s this complicated community that makes the show into a kind of puzzle. Keeping everyone’s names, faces, and deeds straight was a big challenge for me, since I struggle to keep families of non-time travelers straight. So it’s almost as confounding as any of David Lynch’s work, but in a much more practical way.
The photography is beautiful and moody, set in a misty forest haunted by an ominous nuclear power plant and a serial killer. Suspects range from family members to strangers you don’t recognize but have already met.
The questions posed to the individual are asked in the interest of the entire community: Who are you, really? Why do you do what you do? What is your true North and how easily do you stray from it?
Watch it in German and see your Duolingo lessons come to life. I promise, it’s fun to hear all that practice you’ve done come out the mouths of native speakers. Hell, watch it in English, too. Dark is a who-dunnit with time-travel, so it’s only going to make more sense the second time around.
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