Video
The Man in the High Castle
Amazon
By Noel Vera
Frank Spotnitz鈥檚 adaptation of Philip K. Dick鈥檚 classic alternate-history dystopia The Man in the High Castle is alternately ballsy and flawed, but does get this much right: it opens with Jeanette Olsson鈥檚 tender rendition of 鈥淓delweiss,鈥 the song鈥檚 thick longing turned sour by off-kilter music, the recording apparently defective as it skips forward a few times. This is nostalgia curdling gradually into nightmare: we see images of American monuments, maps of the country, flags, war footage. Eventually (like a creeping pestilence) we see swastikas here, there 鈥 hints of the state of the world as it exists in the series.
鈥淓delweiss鈥 of course was written by Oscar Hammerstein with music by Richard Rogers for the 1959 musical The Sound of Music. It鈥檚 about as Austrian as french fries are French.
Don鈥檛 feel too bad if you were taken in 鈥 Theodore Bikel who played Captain Von Trapp on Broadway recalls people from Austria walking up to him and expressing delight at hearing him sing this old folk tune again.
Aside from the pleasure of watching this insufferably saccharine number being corrupted on the small high-definition screen we have the pleasure of seeing the perfect distillation of a major Dickian theme, the always slippery question of authenticity 鈥 what鈥檚 real, what鈥檚 not, how to determine the difference (in short: not easy). Our hero the secretly Jewish Frank Frink (Rupert Evans) is seen working in a factory that produces forged Civil War weapons; later a newsreel canister titled 鈥淭he Grasshopper Lies Heavy鈥 surfaces, containing images of Germany and Japan losing the Second World War. Is the footage authentic or staged, brilliant special effects or cold sober reality?
It鈥檚 a backhanded forehanded high-handed tribute to the power of illusion, of surface appearance: if your spell is strong enough and convincing enough 鈥 if it becomes indistinguishable from reality 鈥 who鈥檚 to say it isn鈥檛 reality? Every time you develop a narrative who鈥檚 to say you鈥檙e not developing your own world complete with history and consequences? 鈥淢oral relativism鈥 is the term some people slap on this style of thinking; 鈥渁 slippery slope,鈥 others like to call it. To Dick I suspect it鈥檚 hardly a slope 鈥 more like an endless frictionless plain impossible to find one鈥檚 footing, or the necessary leverage to raise oneself up off the ground.
Oh, and on the Nazis losing the war 鈥 failed to mention the series鈥 big hook: the story is set in a world where the Axis powers have divided the United States between them, with the Nazis controlling the Eastern Coast, Japan the West (Frink and his girlfriend Juliana Crain [Alexa Davalos] live in San Francisco); a nuclear weapon has been deployed to end the war, not on Hiroshima but Washington DC.
The rest of the pilot doesn鈥檛 display the same level of understanding of the novel, much less of Dick. The Atlantic鈥檚 Noah Berlatsky neatly outlines the more obvious problems: the racism neatly parceled out to the bad guys, good guys largely exempted (Juliana in the novel sneers at Frank for liking 鈥淛aps鈥 and having 鈥渁 large nose鈥); a failure to link the Nazis鈥 鈥渨ill to domination鈥 to the West鈥檚.
There鈥檚 also a bit of sexual whitewashing: in the novel Martin Bormann heads the Reich, as Hitler has been crippled by a long-simmering bout of syphilis; in the pilot Hitler is dying of Parkinson鈥檚 (because syphilis has an uglier ring to it?). In the novel Frank and Juliana were once married now divorced; in the pilot they鈥檙e only co-habitating, allowing Juliana the freedom to travel east, deliver the mysterious newsreel, perhaps meet someone new (i.e. trucker Joe Blake [Luke Kleintank], driving west from New York City). Where Juliana in the novel is a willful force of nature who chooses and leaves her lovers freely, Juliana on the small screen is a kinder gentler woman who loves Frank but is willing to put aside that love for a noble quest. The immediate effect is to erase any trace of 鈥 can鈥檛 think of a better word 鈥 unseemliness from the protagonist鈥檚 character: a wife even an ex (the writers seem to say) shouldn鈥檛 be sleeping around even by suggestion. You lose your audience鈥檚 sympathy that way.
In Dick鈥檚 novel 鈥淭he Grasshopper Lies Heavy鈥 isn鈥檛 a newsreel but a book by Hawthorne Abendsen, the eponymous man in his lofty abode. Turning him from writer to underground filmmaker 鈥 the pilot鈥檚 biggest change 鈥 is in some ways an inspired move: a newsreel is visually more charismatic than a book (once in a while a reel can even be projected); a filmmaker more readily evokes the romantic figure of the rebel artist who creates and distributes his works outside the system (I imagine directors Semel and Percival inspired to emulate Abendsen in that they believe they鈥檙e producing something subversive, dangerous, world-changing).
The pilot, however, fails to include a crucial detail from the novel (skip the rest of this and the next two paragraphs if you plan to read or watch either show or novel): the world Abendsen described is not our own but yet another alternate reality, where Roosevelt retires in the 1940s while the British and the Soviet Union link up to fight Germany. By war鈥檚 end the United States and British Empire are the only superpowers left standing, locked in yet another Cold War stalemate.
We haven鈥檛 even mentioned the third reality Deputy Minister Tagomi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) stumbles into, where, yes, the Japanese still lose but the Embarcadero Freeway dominates the San Francisco skyline (of the three this one most closely resembles our own 鈥 at least until 1989, when the freeway was destroyed by the Loma Prieta earthquake).
Dick always had a few realities tucked up his sleeve, played a more complicated game than just pitting one against another, assuming the first to be superior to the next (the Japanese-controlled territories for example have eliminated urban pollution by investing in electric cars and dirigibles 鈥 in some ways their San Francisco is cleaner, safer, more culturally enlightened than our own). One wonders why he set most of the novel in the relatively well-run Pacific States rather than the more inherently dramatic German States till one realizes that Dick had opted for the more difficult challenge: to depict not a harrowing alternate hell but an unsettlingly familiar (if not downright seductive) dystopia where you need to pierce through the maya, the shell of illusion covering the world, to realize the actual state of things.
But it鈥檚 early days yet, and the pilot does have a few pleasures to offer: stylishly noir photography; a handsome production design despite the low budget (Times Square with a swastika instead of the Coke logo is a memorable touch); a neat cast of characters including Rufus Sewell as the charismatically unkillable Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith, Joel de la Fuente as the quietly sinister Kempeitai inquisitor Kido, and Davalos鈥 more subdued yet more easily appealing Juliana Crain (name changed from the novel鈥檚 Juliana Frink).
Then there鈥檚 the ending which I won鈥檛 give away but will say this: for all its melodrama it does evoke the Dickian themes of authenticity versus illusion (the 鈥渞eal鈥 newsreel smuggler is caught). One line of dialogue in particular (鈥淚鈥檓 not a monster鈥) manages to capture some of the complex flavor of Dick鈥檚 moral worldview: that the most horrifying acts are often committed not by heavy-breathing monsters but by bland-faced bureaucrats, not incapable of the occasional misstep or regretful act of mercy 鈥 people very much like us, in other words.
Not the best Dick adaptation I鈥檝e ever seen (that would be David Cronenberg鈥檚 Videodrome, with its portrait of psychic horror as pathological manifestations) not even the best Dick I鈥檝e seen on TV (that would be Rainer Werner Fassbinder鈥檚 deadpan bizarre World on a Wire, with its multiple reflective surfaces suggesting multiple levels of reality). But as far as above-average television fare tailored for today鈥檚 American audiences goes this is dark daring stuff; at the very least it piques one鈥檚 appetite enough to want to view the other episodes.
