If I have to describe The Serpent in one sentence, it would be – a mess of casting and accents:
- The casting - Charles Sobhraj is Frenchman of Indian and Vietnamese parentage but Tahar Rahim is a French actor of Algerian descent. Close enough for BBC, I guess. :laughing: Several times in the series Sobhraj refer to himself as an ‘Asian’ and I was like, where is this ‘Asian’ he was talking about?!
- The accents – At first, I was very confused why all these British diplomats are concerned about two Dutch backpackers. Colonizers support colonizers? :thinking: Turns out they are supposed to be Dutch, German, Belgian. Oh! :open_mouth: Their terrible accents come and go, so you can easily tell they are all English actors. I hate when USA/UK make movies set in foreign countries but everyone conveniently speaks English instead of their native languages. :rolling_eyes:
Other problems I have with this show:
This series did not portray Charles Sobhraj accurately. In real life he was a mystique and captivating, but this is lacking in Rahim's portrayal. He plays Sobhraj in a very flat and dull manner. The constant blank stare into the distance wasn't enough to convince me he had any charisma.
The constant jumping back and forth in time isn’t executed smoothly. I'm sure BBC thought this was a clever device to create excitement/dynamism, but in fact it’s simply lazy and cheap way of story telling. A sloppy way of creating the drama to avoid having to tell the story well in a single timeline.
The lack of dramatic tension. Only in episode 3 did I get excited about what might happen. The most moving scene of the series is Dominique getting home. No time was taken for the viewer to have any empathy with any of the characters/victims.
All the “Mary Sue/Marty Stu” characterization - from Knippenberg to Siemons, there are too many lazily written cartoon characters. Their sudden and unexpected outbursts of anger seemed way over the top. Next you have Nadine – too many scenes where she decided to scarify herself to help the investigation. It seemed way too exaggerated. Actually, the show focuses more on these characters instead of Charles Sobhraj, it should have been called, “The people who hunt the Serpent down”.
That leads to my next problem with the show. Since most of the show is for the “good” Westerners, there is no mention of all Westerners helping Sobhraj in his crimes. The French businessman named Jean Dhuisme was left out. Barbara Smith (Canadian), Mary Ellen Eather (Australian), Hugey Courage (Belgian) were shown in the last episode but for a very brief moment, and no mention how Sobhraj recruited them. For some reason BBC didn’t want to focus on them, probably not to show colonizers in bad light. Westerns that aren’t rich enough to be rich in their ‘first world countries’ love to move to poor countries to live out their millionaire fantasies. No mention of another Western criminal - Jacqueline Kuster (German), she met Charles while they were both in prison, she was 34, while he was 51 years old. They wanted to get married. Speaking of which, why was Nihita Biswas left out as well? It would have been interesting to see more about Sobhraj‘s life after he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The show is just facts of what Charles did only from the Wikipedia article about him, one would expect the writers to do more research.
One last thing - I do realize that people in the 70s smoked more, but still it is repellent to watch every character smoking heavily in almost every scene.
I'm a sucker for an open ended narrative, and Anatomy of a Fall gives us so many breadcrumbs to work with it's hard not to get lost in how we feel once the credits roll. It's been amazing to read multiple interpretations throughout the days following my viewing, and I'm still not sure where I land on the ultimate conclusion of the plot. What I can say for certainty is that Anatomy of a Fall is a glorious peek inside the life of a delightfully nuanced couple. Their interactions are raw and real, arguments feel clumsy and looped, realistic and believable. It asks us to question our perception and interpretation of others; seeing relationships for brief moments and coming to grandiose conclusions about their infinite nuances without ever truly knowing these people and the dynamics that push and pull between them. I'll continue to return to this movie in my head for weeks to come, as another minute detail bubbles up and questions the narrative I've built in my head about these people and what transpired between them. Maybe I should watch it again, I can't imagine what a second viewing will unearth. Fantastic film, I expect a lot of award season love for this one.
