All the Light We Cannot See review: Second World War saga is a shonky, star-studded dud

Much has been made of the tactless use of war and genocide as mere scenery in films like ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’. This novel adaptation comes from the same aesthetic impulse, the ‘tweeification’ of horror

Right now, war doesn’t seem that glamorous. In the present tense, it seems an unlikely canvas for romance or adventure, and yet, time after time, war – with the clarifying distance of history – is used as a narrative prop. Suddenly, teenage heartbreak has huge emotional depth, grief and relief perform their tango, and all the struggles of being human are amplified to their maximum level. In war, everything is overwrought: and that’s precisely the timbre of Netflix’s new four-part drama, All the Light We Cannot See.

France, the Second World War. Marie (Aria Mia Loberti), a blind teenager, broadcasts snippets of Jules Verne’s novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea from her attic in Saint-Malo. Her father Daniel (Mark Ruffalo) is gone, and Saint-Malo is awaiting the arrival of the Americans, who might end the Nazi’s occupation. Among the ranks of the Germans is Werner (Louis Hofmann), a sensitive young radio engineer. The two are bound by an obsession: a professor who, through their childhoods, spoke to them via shortwave radio, telling stories of the world. “The most important light,” comes the professor’s most influential maxim, “is the light you cannot see.”

These are the goodies. There are also baddies, not least Lars Eidinger’s Reinhold von Rumpel, a terminally ill Nazi straight out of the Indiana Jones playbook. He’s on the hunt for the “Sea of Flames”, a legendary diamond said to have healing properties, which happens to be in Daniel’s possession. “This war, this madness,” Von Rumpel bemoans. “I just want to live.” And so his quest for the stone brings him to Saint-Malo and into the paths of Marie, Werner and the shadowy great-uncle Etienne (Hugh Laurie), a member of the French resistance. Despite the backdrop of war in Europe – the Holocaust is referenced, obliquely – what proceeds is a caper, more in the mould of Francophile escapades like Hugo and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec.

The show is brimming with pedigree. Adapted by Steven Knight, Peaky Blinders’ head honcho, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See brings together talent from across the industry. Stars of world cinema like Felix Kammerer (notable for his lead role in last year’s All Quiet on the Western Front), Oscar nominee Ruffalo, Grammy winner James Newton Howard, Cheaper by the Dozen director Shawn Levy: this is Netflix at its most awards baiting. Which is why it is symptomatic too of the decline in quality of the service’s output, because All the Light We Cannot See is a dud.

The adaptation’s problems are rooted in the problems of the book. The structure, which is non-linear and follows Marie and Werner both separately and together, is easier to follow over 544 pages than four 50-minute episodes. Similarly, the inherent silliness of the plot is more constrained within the limits of the imagination. On screen it bursts through at every narrative turn. Much has been made of the tactless use of war and genocide as mere scenery in films like The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Where Hands Touch. All the Light We Cannot See comes from the same aesthetic impulse, the tweeification of horror. The central MacGuffin – a diamond hidden in a model village – has a comic book quality, while the show is so riddled with Gallic tropes, from Debussy to crêpes, it becomes hard to take seriously. But does it want to be taken seriously? The appearance of the “Saint-Malo Old Ladies’ Resistance Club” makes it feel like Richard Osman is taking the reins.

The casting of visually impaired actors to play Marie (old and young) was a good decision, giving the role an important physicality. The casting of Ruffalo, on the other hand, was a misstep. I would make a joke about his acting being jambonny, except that there is nothing even vaguely French about his performance. He speaks like a man who has never met a human being before (shooting Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things may have infected him), declaiming in gravelly faux-British tones. Laurie, meanwhile, chooses to do almost nothing with his take on Uncle Etienne – an altogether more successful decision.

The show could be forgiven some shonkiness and self-indulgence if the central chemistry between Marie and Werner was coherent. But the achronological telling wreaks havoc with their relationship, and the German soldier is relegated to a footnote. What’s left is a cartoonish portrait of a Nazi in pursuit of a blind girl’s diamond, which does little credit to the sheer scale of suffering endured in both our recent history and the contemporary moment.