Poetic license

Babylon Berlin 2017- Germany. X Filme Creative Pool; ARD Degeto (German public broadcasting); Beta Film; Sky; Netflix. Created and written by Henk Handloegten, Tom Tykwer, and Achim von Borries, based on the eight-novel Gereon Rath crime series by Volker Kutscher.

The creators of the German television series Babylon Berlin take inspired and energetic leaps of the imagination to put modern viewers in the midst of feverishly vibrant, spiritually-ailing Weimar-era Berlin.

Weimar-era Berlin Alexanderplatz is resurrected in Babylon Berlin.

Rather than strictly follow the popular series of “neo-noir” crime novels on which it is based, showrunners Henk Handloegten, Tom Tykwer, and Achim von Borries have taken poetic license to reimagine Volker Kutscher’s characters and plots, as well as period and historical details, in a highly stylized way that suggests to modern viewers a time perhaps not unlike our own.

The cast of this ambitious project, from its principals to information-peddling drag queens and incidental street urchins, is as fascinating as the set at the center of the drama, Berlin’s reimagined and restored 1929 Alexanderplatz and its former famous police “Rote Burg” (Red Castle) headquarters destroyed in the Second World War. The series is shot at the legendary Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam, where F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, and Ernst Lubitsch made films at Universum Film A.G. (UFA)—and Alfred Hitchcock learned his art. A major plot point takes place at UFA on the set of an Expressionist film made for the series. And, in addition to snatches of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s 1928 “The Threepenny Opera”, the series soundtrack features reimaginings of the period sound, by Johnny Klimek, showrunner Tom Tykwer, and Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry who appears in a glitzy cabaret singing his own “Bitter Sweet” in German (the show uses several Ferry numbers in German).

What holds Police Inspector Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) together is his job investigating crimes in Weimar-era Berlin, a young Sam Spade in the making.

At the center of the story is Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch), a police inspector originally seconded to Berlin from Köln where his father is police commissioner and a close associate of the mayor. Rath also is a former line soldier who survived the Allies’ hellish final 100-day offensive on the Siegfried Line; he suffers from post-traumatic stress which he treats with unconventional therapy and under-the-counter drugs. Like his tattered and dispirited country, Rath has other issues. What holds him together is his job investigating crimes in Berlin. His focus lands him on some of the most sensitive and complicated cases—cases for which typically there are no legal solutions.  

Police Inspector Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) submits to unconventional therapy by Dr. Anno Schmidt (Jens Harzer) to treat his post-traumatic stress from the First World War.

Anglo-American movie audiences are used to seeing the horrific effects on their countries’ soldiers inflicted by the Terrible Hun of the First World War. Here we see the other side, the remains of a German generation who set out with the same high spirits as their opponents, fought as hard and suffered similar frightful losses and injuries, but lost their war and returned home with a rifle and the clothes on their back at best cynical, like Rath’s police supervisor Bruno Wolter (Peter Kurth), shell-shocked like Rath and former policeman turned snitch Franz Krajewski (Henning Peker), or missing limbs, to a country in social, moral, political, and economic turmoil. 

Communists take to the streets on May Day 1929 in Babylon Berlin.

Rath’s investigations escort viewers down the mean streets of Weimar-era Berlin, a young world capital the writer Alexander Döblin called at that time “the Brandenburg Nineveh”, where it was said that no one who lived there was born there and everyone was in a hurry to grow up. This brash capital is developing into the city it would be in new century. In addition to Rath and his police colleagues we see Russian emigres and Soviet Chekists; German monarchists and nationalist-conservatives who want to rearm Germany’s army illegally with Soviet help; German leftists and fledgling Nazis; organized crime groups; gays and the underground sex market; movie people, reporters, and everyday Berliners just getting by.

Mutual curiosity brings Police Inspector Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) together with Charlotte “Lotte” Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) in Babylon Berlin.

Among the everyday Berliners is Charlotte “Lotte” Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries), a young woman who lives in “rental barracks” flat shared grudgingly by three generations of her family. Lotte is the household breadwinner. She has a day job as a police stenographer but moonlights as a hostess at a nightclub, a taxi dancer who occasionally turns tricks that can cause bruises. She has the curiosity, smarts, and resourcefulness of a good reporter and aspires to be a police detective at a time when women did not do such work. Lotte’s activities quickly overlap with Rath’s.

August Benda (Matthias Brandt), head of the political police, and his housekeeper Greta Overbeck (Leonie Benesch) broaden the scope of the narrative with serious ultimate consequences for each.

Lotte runs into Greta Overbeck (Leonie Benesch), a childhood friend, on a Berlin street. Greta is a country mouse with a healing jagged Caesarian scar from the baby she had out of wedlock and gave up to adoption. She is looking for work but too modest to share her friend’s moonlighting gig; Lotte finds her a place as a maid in the household of August Benda (Matthias Brandt), who is Jewish and heads the country’s political police. This connection broadens the scope of the narrative with serious ultimate consequences for each.

Imperious Anne-Marie Nyssen (Marie Anne Fliegel, left) and Colonel Gottfried Wendt (Benno Fürmann, right) confer with like-minded nationalist-conservative political insiders in Babylon Berlin.

There is Alfred Nyssen (Lars Eidinger), the adult scion of an influential industrialist family ruled from a castle by his imperious mother Anne-Marie Nyssen (Marie Anne Fliegel). Nyssen sees the stock market crash coming. He wants to enrich himself in his own right and to impress and ultimately revenge himself against his mother and nationalist-conservative political insiders such as Generalmajor Wilhelm Seegers (Ernst Stötzner) and “Colonel” Gottfried Wendt (Benno Fürmann) who do not take him seriously.

Not far from Sam Goldwyn’s Hollywood: Edgar Kasabian “The Armenian” (Misel Maticevic), his wife Esther (Meret Becker), and Walter Weintraub (Ronald Zehrfeld) at the movie premier of their big project.

And there is the ménage-à-trois of Edgar Kasabian “The Armenian” (Misel Maticevic), an organized crime boss and film investor, his wife Esther Korda Kasabian (Meret Becker), a former actress, and Walter Weintraub (Ronald Zehrfeld), a gangster film executive, all of whom would have been at home in Philip Marlowe’s Los Angeles.

But this brief dramatis personae barely scratches the surface. The narrative tugs between style, content, and action as it recreates an extraordinary time and actors find ways into characters’ personas high and low; the narrative locks in late in the second series when the scattershot details begin to fall into patterns. Series three wraps with a stylistic flourish that points to the new season four.