October 2018 The Times 3

out of Döblin – that figures BY URSULA SCHEER in the fate of each our stars: the weighty, warmhearted yet o one evades the under- brutal Bruno Wolter (Peter tow of ecstasy, nor the Kurth), who passes himself off Nvortex of doom. As the BERLIN TIMES as something like a fatherly first double-episode of Babylon friend. Berlin comes to a close and the A political sex scandal pro- denizens of a packed nightclub vides but a succulent introduc- throb to the music, entranced tory segue to the main events and infatuated by the androg- that will ensnarl the main char- ynous charm of the Russian 1929 acters: a bloody massacre and a performer on stage, elsewhere conspiracy involving a freight in the city Stalin’s henchmen train from Russia. Poison gas, unload their Gatling guns on an Weighty, warmhearted, brutal – Berlin Babylon is the German TV series bounteous amounts of gold and underground band of Trotskyite of the year, depicting life in the German capital during the the ambitions of the “Black dreamers. A lady of the night ,” a group of gen- finds her John; confetti litters the erals out to restore the Kaiser air; bodies fall in a flurry of gun- to his throne – these are just fire. The singer lowers her mask, a few of the factors our stars banana-skirted dancers contort face in season one. Season two their bodies à la Josephine Baker features the specter of commu-

and a love-struck youth looks FILME FRÉDÉRIC BATIER/X nists and brownshirts marching on in awe. the streets, as a pincer move- Everything spins, everything ment of right- and left-wing happens at once and everything enemies of democracy threatens relates to everything else: the to take down history’s actual glamorous and the gruesome, lust Foreign Minister Gustav Strese- for life and fear of death, desire mann and the fictitious, Jewish and pain, the lives of the little Deputy Police Commissioner people and the global political August Brenda. order. The images in the final is no history sequence are cut to the rhythm lesson. It is an adaptation of of the music, forming a wide ’s novel Der shot in the mind’s eye: Such is nasse Fisch (The Wet Fish) Babylon Berlin, the capital of with a slew of historical details the German Reich in the year thrown in a manner somewhat 1929, six years after the hyper- lacking in academic rigor, but inflation of the early Weimar the broad strokes of history Republic, and four years before more or less hit the mark. And Hitler comes to power. We find exploits certain ourselves at the peak of the Roar- of his talents that have brought ing Twenties, a year in which the him success in the past: his use Worker’s Revolt meets its bloody of kaleidoscopic imagery, his suppression, Alfred Döblin pens expertise at combining the fates his Berlin Alexanderplatz and of many individuals into one Bertolt Brecht delivers the trium- dynamic narrative whole and phant Threepenny Opera. his inimitable sense of tempo Lead director Tom Tykwer and timing. It’s no matter that (; Sense 8), who the plot is sometimes over- also co-created the series with wrought – what a ride! We Achim von Borries and Henk have love, sex, syphilis, crime, Handloegten, claims he is trying the state, and we’re just get- to hurl his audience into a time Party like it’s 1929: Charlotte Richter (Liv Lisa Fries) is out on the town in Berlin Babylon. ting started; a woman dies but machine. The mammoth project lives on, a tattooed priest of shot at 300 locations for 185 And why not? Is Germany not Väter (Our mothers, our war order was unshakable. This Gereon Rath. The commissioner the underworld and an Arme- shooting days with