Headlines
The Man in the High Castle Review
History in the Remaking
Philip K Dick’s seminal novel The Man in the High Castle has been adapted by Amazon and Tripwire sent its contributing writer Andrew Colman to review the 10 episodes of its first season
If there is one thing that can be said about Amazon’s latest television offering, it is that it is admirably outre and ambitious. Very much a marquee project designed primarily to expand the company’s standing in an ever more crowded marketplace, The Man In The High Castle’s somewhat taboo scenario might seem a monumental challenge to whoever took it on – not that this would be a unique effort, as Robert Harris’s Fatherland, featuring a similar story, was made into a critically acclaimed film in 1994. However, translating Philip K. Dick’s novella into the televisual long form presents a new set of problems, with the need to balance plot, subtext and action into an episodic format. It isn’t just that the premise and tropes are from a bygone era, it is the gamble it takes with its commentary and target audience, which has shifted seismically since the book on which it is based was published. The result is a blend of old-school television, understated science fiction and state of the art production values, which could easily have failed but for the program’s consistency, understanding of scale and the need to remain faithful to the unremittingly grim source narrative.
The premise of Philip K Dick’s tale is simple enough – the year is 1962, 15 years after the Axis powers won World War 2. America is divided into three zones, with the Nazis controlling the lion’s share of the country, as the Greater Nazi Reich, whilst the Imperial Japanese have the Pacific States in their grasp. The dividing line between these two territories is the J.G. Ballard sounding Neutral Zone, located in the Rocky Mountains. A state of Cold War exists between the two empires, with the looming threat of enmities boiling over informing the story at every turn. Most of the action is based in San Francisco, where a woman, Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos), is witness to her sister’s murder by the Kempeitai (Imperial Guard), seconds after she is handed a film by her containing newsreel footage that depicts an alternative history in which the Allies won. She immediately makes her sister’s cause her own, learning that a mysterious Man In The High Castle is collecting these films, that may possess the power to overturn reality itself. She then travels to the Neutral Zone to make contact with the resistance there, unaware that she is constantly being monitored by Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith (Rufus Sewell) and his factotum, undercover agent Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank). As a consequence, her boyfriend Frank Frink (Rupert Evans) becomes a target. Meanwhile Nobusuke Tagomi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), a high ranking Japanese minister, plans to defuse the imminent hot war by clandestinely meeting up with renegade Nazi officer Rudolph Wegener (Carsten Norgaard).
Although the series’ reach does sometimes exceed its grasp, its measured direction manages to avoid the expected pitfalls of over-exposition and melodrama – grand guignol and cliched dystopian motifs are kept to a relative minimum. However the violence is always naturalistic, and there are some authentically morbid touches – none more so than when Frank’s sister-in-law and children are led by the Kempeitai’s Chief Inspector Kido (Joel de la Fuente) to a plush, upholstered waiting room that is in fact a gas chamber. The key to the drama’s success is the unforced dissonance, and the constant dissembling of the characters – Sewell’s ruthless Obergruppenfuhrer is called John Smith, his family all-American. The coupling of picket-fence suburbia with Nazi symbolism and cadences is successfully unnerving, its delineation depressingly real. Sewell’s portrayal of the sly, manipulative, immovable Nazi ensures that the viewer is in no doubt as to how this alternative America has wilfully, if not abjectly, aligned itself to its conquerors. Virtually all the characters are hiding something, the story subtly unfolding to reveal the true extent of the perfidy and lies that underpin life in this benighted world.
If there is one fault with the series, it’s that the inner narrative of the protagonists isn’t adequately explored, whilst the villains and war criminals of the piece are of more interest in this regard (and get the best lines!). Such character study was certainly apparent in the much more earnest and straightforward Holocaust miniseries from 1978. The occasional dialogue illuminates matters however, notably between old SS comrades John Smith and Rudolph Wegener, in the Three Monkeys episode – after Wegener’s wry entrapment by Smith, he reveals his disgust with the regime, which is met with nonplussed disdain from his fellow Nazi. The script fairly crackles here, with the two former close friends incapable of understanding each others’ convictions, but such are the constraints of the format that the scene is quickly dispensed with. Such economy works however when it comes to Chief Inspector Kido, the merciless Grand Inquisitor of the Kempeitai. De La Fuente’s implacably arch, petulant performance is pitch perfect, the character’s motivation always apparent.
Indeed, the performances across the board are excellent, especially from Sewell and Davalos, not to mention Norgaard and Tagomi’s embattled, troubled turns, the latter’s Trade Minister the unsung conscience and hub of the series. There are one or two acting blunders, such as Burn Gorman’s snarling, caricatured Marshall, and Ray Proscia’s SS Oberst-Gruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, who does seem to have wandered in from central casting, such is his need to chew the scenery. Needless to say none of this detracts from the series, which despite its predictably ambiguous denouement (there will be a second series!) is generally satisfying, as we finally learn who the Man In The High Castle is. Overall a very good if slightly pulpy show rather than a heavyweight masterwork – yet it is never less than entertaining and sobering in equal measure. I for one will be awaiting the next ten episodes.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login