oak1971
Familiar Face
- Messages
- 84
- Location
- SE Wisconsin
I think it was great. The end threw me, as was intended. Of course, they just can't leave it there. Can they?
I think it was great. The end threw me, as was intended. Of course, they just can't leave it there. Can they?
It is a program produced by Amazon and you will need a Prime membership to watch it. Will not be available on Netflix as they are a competitor of Amazon. It is not available on DVD at least not legally. [emoji3] Amazon wants you to subscribe to their service.I am in Canada and cannot find "The Man in the"......who produces it? Is it a Netflix offering or is it British? I would love to track it down. Thanks,
I was "wastching" a 2 disc DVD set on Ebay and it sold for over $60. I will have to wait til it becomes available in Canada or the DVD price drops considerably.
Finally finished the first season and am incredibly impressed. The style, sets, period details, details of what things would be like if this alternative history had happened are incredibly thoughtful, powerful and poignant. What makes this series stand out is that the story and acting (with a few exceptions) equal the gorgeous style. Just one example, Rufus Sewell plays the cold nazi SS officer with a combination of quiet, but vicious, evil in his official capacity and human, touching feeling for his family that is frightening, but because of his acting skill, convincing to see coexist in one person. And the series gains incredible momentum as each episode builds to a final and highly dramatic, tense cliff-hanger ending (but with enough resolution of some open story lines to make it satisfying).
To Worf's comments above, my views are that we are always closer to the abyss than we think; our civilized behavior, our social controls are all more tenuous than most of us like to believe. That said, even while the majority in Germany stayed silent (at best) and many jeered and denounced those targeted by the nazis, some small but meaningful number of Germans risked their lives and their family's to save Jewish people and others considered enemies by the nazis. When I'm having a positive day, that gives me some hope.
Yes, all those thoughts run through my mind when I watch this show, but those thoughts run through my mind all the time in small and large ways everyday because, as a student of history, modern parallels to triggers and risks echo all around us. But I still try to enjoy shows like "Man in the High Castle" and hope, maybe, it even helps, in some small way, to educate and remind us all of those risks.
I hope my post wasn't/isn't seen as a "downer"... To me the best drama makes us "think"... wonder and ponder. Especially if the story forces us to ask ourselves "what would we do in the same situation".
Actually, your post really moved me. I had a Jewish grandparent, a tough young guy who found some way to get an education in Eastern Europe and then made good in the oil fields of OK and TX. At the end of his life (1942) he was a wealthy Southern California land developer and there was no longer much indication of Jewishness in his lifestyle, culture, or behavior by the time my mother was born. He was "passing." Yet the Nazis would have known with very little research and I'd have been on one of those lists ... probably much to my surprise, because no one in the family discussed it much, they didn't care one way or the other. SoCal, it was the place where everyone remade themselves.
I've always worried what would have happened if FDR had said the Depression would be over if we just locked up all the blacks. My dad's 1930s newspapers report plenty of "Democratic Lynchings" among families of boxers and black guys he worked with in the freight yards. History turning into the next phase of ugly could have been just around the corner.
Historically it seems whenever we have a crisis we get the leadership we crave, it's a miracle and it seems to come out of nowhere. Yet, it's the underlying morality of our culture that chooses the direction that leadership takes. We in the US were lucky, the culture was vaguely headed in the right direction so we got moral leadership. The war probably even accelerated our development. Same with Britain. Our countries were far from perfect but they were on the upswing from what they had been. Nazi Germany and the USSR ... not so much. They too got leaders. Dynamic leaders who seemed, at least to some, to be solving things, doing the right things.
We just have to hope that we really are who we really want to be. It's a good question for all those who consider themselves righteous ... but they are usually the last to ask it.
Historically it seems whenever we have a crisis we get the leadership we crave, it's a miracle and it seems to come out of nowhere. Yet, it's the underlying morality of our culture that chooses the direction that leadership takes. We in the US were lucky, the culture was vaguely headed in the right direction so we got moral leadership. The war probably even accelerated our development. Same with Britain.
The Uk certainly didn't do well out of the war. I'm sure most of us at least would prefer how things turned out over the alternative, but post-war Britain was a poor place, economically devastated. The UK's war loan to the Us was only finally paid off early in the 21st Century, I believe (I don't recall offhand whether it was towards the endof Bush II's term in office, or early in the Obama era). Rationing continued well after the war - clothes rationing until 1949, food rationing (meat in particular) until 1954, conscription until 1963 (final intake on "National Service" having been 1960). It wasn't really until the early sixties that the British economy could have been said to have fully recovered. For most people in the UK, the fifties certainly weren't the boomtime they are popularly regarded as having been in the US.